Disputo bbPress Theme Review

WordPress is the popular option amongst bloggers to start the website. However, it is not an easy task to build certain types of websites with WordPress. Creating a forum website is one of the difficult task in WordPress. The most preferred option is to use bbPress forum plugin among many other available plugins like wpForo. The advantage with bbPress is that it is from the Automattic who is behind the WordPress itself. However, the look of the plugin is much outdated for the current web design standards. Therefore, you need to customize the plugin yourself or look for readymade bbPress themes.

Related: How to setup bbPress forum on WordPress Site?

Disputo bbPress Theme

Disputo is one such customized bbPress theme available in themeforest marketplace. The plugin will cost you $49 for a single domain installation. Once installed and activated on your site, you are ready to go.

Feature of Disputo bbPress Theme

Though the author advertises it as a bbPress theme it offers a long list of features.

• Fully responsive theme made with Bootstrap 4
• Personal messages within members
• Like / unlike ratings
• Ad manager
• Custom login / register / lost password pages
• User blogging
• Custom widgets
• WooCommerce support
• FAQ post type
• Frontend media upload
• Inappropriate content reporting

Bundled Plugins

The developer does not clearly mention on the themeforest page about the list of plugins required for using this theme. Though some plugins like WooCommerce and Social Logins are optional, you should have recommended plugins for the theme to look like in the demo. The theme required the below plugins to customize the site like a demo.

• bbPress
• Contact Form 7
• Disputo Features
• Disputo Messages
• Disputo Rating System
• DV Shortcode Whitelist
• Kirki Toolkit
• Page Builder by SiteOrigin
• SiteOrigin Widgets Bundle
• Theme My Login Custom Login Customizer
• Social Login
• WooCommerce
• One Click Demo Import

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Importing Demo Content

After installing the theme you can activate without any product key activation. This is in contrast with many themeforest themes like Uncode in which you need to activate the usage with the product key. We have noticed, there are lots of fake downloads available on the internet due to this no activation.

You can import all the demo content including the images using the One Click Import Demo plugin. Go to “Appearance > Import Demo Data” and import all the demo content in one click.

Again this is in contrast to envanto marketplace themes that never allow images in the import. Generally, importing will delete all existing content on your site. However, you can import demo data in Disputo theme without deleting any existing content on the site. In overall, it’s good but different experience installing Disputo theme.

Creating Forums with Disputo Theme

This is a general part; if you are familiar with bbPress then the process is same with Disputo. However, you can do the additional setups in the forums:

• Add cover image for each forum.
• Enable rating system and personal message
• Enable ad manager
• Forum will show the user statistic like how many topics and replies he/she created
• You can allow users to tag the topic for inappropriate content

Blogging and Shop

The theme also offers blog shop page layouts. You can enable user blog posts submission through the profile area.

In order to have a shop, you should install WooCommerce plugin.

Layouts and Widgets

SiteOrigin is a free page builder that helps this theme to add drag and drop widgets. In addition the theme also offers custom widgets to add forums, replies, latest comments, statistics, etc. on the sidebar and footer area.

Ad Manager

One of the important features of the theme is a built-in ad manager. You can simply paste AdSense ad code or insert image URL to show ads on your forum. It is possible to add ads on sidebar as a widget, before footer and inside the discussion thread.

Support and Documentation

The developer will supply a single page documentation containing most of the useful information. However, for a $49 theme you will get disappointed with the kind of simple documentation you get. Also you will not find much details on the developer’s website. So the only way to clarify the questions is to raise it through themeforest support ticket.

Alternatively, you can also ask pre-sales questions in the comments section of the product page.

Issues with TML

We have found lots of issues with the theme and reported to the developer. We understood from the developer that all the issues are caused by Theme My Login plugin. It seems the free options in TML plugins were removed with the premium add-ons which affected the functionality of the theme. However, we have to request refund, as analyzing TML plugin is not the intention we purchased the theme.

The developer removed TML plugin in the latest version 2.1. However, this may not be the optimal solution for most us. TML plugin hides the wp-login page and show custom login / register / lost password pages. It also restricts the access to WordPress dashboard. Now the developer suggests using Custom Login Customizer plugin. This plugin will not hide the wp-login page and all users can access WordPress admin dashboard. If you want to hide the dashboard then you need to install the heavyweight WooCommerce plugin. Most of the forum websites don’t integrate with shop on the same domain. So for a forum theme, it is not acceptable to have workaround login solutions.   

Missing Features

Other than accessing wp-login and dashboard issues, there are few other important functions missing in theme.

• No option for adding custom scripts. You need separate plugin to add Google Analytics.
• Theme does not offer multiple sidebars.
• bbPress plugin has a problem in not offering login/register links below the discussion thread. Disputo theme does not solve this problem. You need to reply on sidebar widget or scroll all the way up to find the login button on the menu.
• No possibility to customize the header like disabling it on certain pages or changing the heading style.
• We don’t see any option to customize the fonts for your site.