This morning, the latest version of my favorite forum software, bbPress, was released. While this is a beta and not a final release, it’s still a major event for the project: this release is in the form of a WordPress plugin, instead of a stand-alone application as it’s been in the past. In December 2009 I wrote about this decision – and at the time I was rather disappointed with the change in direction; but now my views have changed. I’m also excited to see that Matt and his company, Automattic have decided to invest the time and money needed to make this happen; there for a while it looked like bbPress really was dying.

Thanks to services like StackExchange and its numerous clones, it seems the days of standalone forums are numbered; when combined with the increasing strength of WordPress as a full-blown CMS, this move actually makes a lot of sense.

I’m excited both as a user and developer – this opens many new doors from both perspectives, and will certainly increase adoption of the software, as integration with the current version is a bit tricky.

Congratulations to the entire team on this release; it really is a major milestone for the project!