bbPress 2.5 Released – Forum Subscriptions, Importers, and Theme Compatibility

bbPress 2.5 is now available! This is a great release filled with a number of improvements. The most notable addition in bbPress 2.5 are forum subscriptions. Forum subscriptions allow users to subscribe to new topics created in specific forums. Other items that contain a new car smell are:

A number of new importers

BuddyPress Notifications integration

Theme Compatibility

Internationalization support

A number of bug fixes

The roadmap for bbPress 2.6 has already been created. John James Jacoby says the release will focus on performance improvements and replacing the WordPress comment system with bbPress topics. I’m very interested to see the implementation of replacing WordPress comments with bbPress topics. I’ve personally had enthusiastic conversations with John at various WordCamps discussing this feature and what it would mean for bridging the gap between forums and blog comments. However, I think this one particular feature could help forums regain popularity as a means of discussion instead of relying on blog comments alone.