bbPress 2015 Survey Results Show Users Want Attachments, Better Moderation Tools

The bbPress development team published the results of its 2015 survey. This year, 213 people participated which is 30 more than last year. After reviewing, replacing, and removing some questions from the 2014 survey, this year’s survey has 25 questions.

A variety of survey question types were used to gather the data including, multiple choices, check boxes, text fields, email box, and open‐ended questions. Empty forms were deleted and those marked as incomplete were reviewed individually. Submissions that had no responses on the second and third pages of the survey were excluded from the report.

Highlights From the Survey

The majority of respondents use bbPress 2.5 and above with WordPress 4.2 and above. Seventy-one percent of participants using bbPress <=1.x.x are also using the latest version of WordPress. This data indicates bbPress users are vigilant in keeping their sites up to date.

In terms of who uses bbPress, 51% of respondents use it on their own sites while 30% create sites with bbPress forums for others.

bbPress 2015 Survey Who Uses bbPress

For the second year in a row, the top three languages used are English 74%, German 7%, and French 6.5%. Three-fourths or 75% of bbPress installations are within WordPress either in the domain root, physical directory, or physical subdomain.

The remaining 25% are on multisite installations where more than half have activated bbPress network-wide and the rest in multiple networks.

bbPress User Installations

One statistic I’m proud of is that 29% of the respondents found out about the survey through WP Tavern.

The most wanted features in a bbPress theme are, Responsive (69.5%), Light and Fresh Design (52%), and Compatible with the latest bbPress version (49%). A preference for Responsive, mobile-first themes is in fourth place at 39%.

For the second year in a row, Attachments (42.5%), Ajaxification of Topics and Replies (41.5%), and Moderation tools in the front end (39%) are the most requested features.

2015 Most Requested Features

The Future of bbPress

Mercime, a BuddyPress and bbPress core contributor, confirmed at the end of the survey that the bbPress project is alive and well. According to Mercime, the development team is in the middle of a large migration project:

The bbPress core team has been involved in the process of migrating the WordPress Support Forums (English and all Rosetta sites) from bbPress 1.x.x to bbPress 2.5.8 starting with one European-language forums subsite which has been already ported and being tested on.

While this migration has been discussed many times and often over the years, @johnjamesjacoby formally started the process when he posted the results of an audit to show the custom functionality required for a successful migration.

The project involves multiple teams including, the WP Support team and WP Meta Team. The migration will impact more than 8 million users on WordPress.org. Any improvements made to bbPress to ease the migration process are going to be merged back into the project.