In this post, we will show you how to display and manage bbPress replies on the frontend. This is great if you have a person or a team in charge of managing the different replies that people add to bbPress topics and forums.
It can also be very useful if you are building a platform for a client where the client can manage forums, topics, and replies from the frontend without having to use wp-admin, even without having to know that the platform uses WordPress behind the scenes.
For this, in addition to the bbPress plugin (which we assume you already have installed in WordPress), we will use the WP Frontend Admin plugin. This plugin allows us to display any wp-admin page in the frontend of our website. You can create frontend dashboards and web apps using any WordPress plugin behind the scenes.
You can try the premium plugin on your website for free for 7 days.
Once installed and activated, follow these simple steps to display and manage bbPress replies on the frontend.
1- Display the bbPress replies on the frontend
To display the bbPress replies page and any other page on the frontend, you don’t have to program or write any line of code. You just need to go to the page you want to display and click on the View on frontend button on the top bar of wp-admin.
Just like this:
- Go to Topics > All Replies.
- Click View on the frontend.
It’s also important to tell you that WP Frontend Admin works perfectly with any WordPress page builder. Here are some of them:
- Elementor
- Visual Composer
- Gutenberg
- Divi
- Beaver Builder
- WP Page Builder
- Page Builder by SiteOrigin
- Oxygen
- Live Composer
- Brizy
- Etc.
Therefore, you can display the bbPress replies on the frontend by using the following shortcode on any page created with any of the mentioned page builders:
[vg_display_admin_page page_url="edit.php?post_type=reply"]
Now you need to click Preview to display the bbPress replies on the frontend.
2- Select the frontend bbPress replies page basic information
To make it completely easy to create and configure your frontend pages, WP Frontend Admin will display the necessary options in the Quick Settings panel.
You can start configuring your frontend page using the following fields:
- Page title: Enter the new page title here.
- URL slug: Enter the URL slug using keywords only.
- Page template: We’ll select the Default template to keep using our theme’s settings.
- Add page to this menu: Select the navigation menu where you want to add this page.
3- Hide any unnecessary elements from your frontend replies page
You can completely simplify the wp-admin pages you display on the frontend so that your users don’t have to deal with fields that are not essential for their use of replies. To do this, you should hide any unnecessary fields and elements. Just follow these simple steps:
- Click Hide element.
- Click the element you want to hide.
Keep in mind that you will need to repeat these two steps with every element you want to hide from your frontend bbPress replies page.
You can also toggle the Hide notices added by other plugins or themes checkbox to prevent users from seeing unnecessary elements that may appear in the future.
4- Edit any texts on your frontend bbPress replies page
In addition to hiding any unnecessary fields, you can easily edit any text on your frontend pages. Just follow these simple steps:
- Click Edit texts.
- Edit all the texts you want.
- Click Stop editing texts.
5- Disable any unnecessary columns from your frontend replies page
This page will show the list of replies that users add to forums and topics. Therefore, you can also disable and hide any column that is not essential. For example, you can hide the date when replies were added, or you decide which columns to hide.
To do so, you just have to check the columns you don’t want to show on the frontend on the Disabled Columns section on the Quick Settings panel.
Also, you could check the “The users should see the posts created by them only” checkbox if you want users to see their own replies only. However, if your platform will be to manage different replies, we do not recommend to activate this option.
When you have selected all these values, you can publish the page by clicking Save.
6- Optional: Customize the Add New/Edit reply form on the frontend
If you want, you can also click on Add New or open an existing reply to customize the add/edit reply form. You can hide any unnecessary elements or edit any text to replace references to plugins or themes, or clarify texts.
Once you’re done, click Save to apply the changes.
Here we show you a gif of how the bbPress forum, topics and replies management will look like on the frontend.
Just keep in mind that only users with the “edit_replies” capability enabled will be able to view and manage bbPress replies on the frontend. You can follow this tutorial to learn how to assign that capability to any user role on your website.
Here are some other tutorials you might be interested in about the bbPress plugin:
Done!
As you can see, it is really easy to use the WP Frontend Admin plugin to display and manage bbPress replies on the frontend. You can start creating any web app or frontend dashboard using any other plugin behind the scenes.
You can try the premium plugin on your website for free for 7 days.
