bbPress, the forum software developed by Automattic has hit the streets with a final 1.0 version. Automattic is better known as the company behind Wordpress, and bbPress has been rather living under a rock for the past few months. However, it has got its time now, so you can try the final release now.

bbPress is basically a very minimalistic, simple and fast forum software, although with some good community support lately, it has been able to build a number of features and plugins. One of the major advantages that bbPress has over other forum softwares is that it integrates very well with Wordpress. Bloggers using Wordpress will feel at home when incorporating a forum onto their site. Moreover, users will need a single account to access both the Wordpress and bbPress installation.

Checkout the new features and improvements that the final release brings:

• “Voices” count on topics reports the number of individuals participating in a conversation
• Native support for cookie integration (single sign-on) with Wordpress 2.7 and 2.8
• Optional support for memcached object caching
• Time-zone and Daylight Savings time support
• A complete XML-RPC publishing API
• Pingback support – each topic can receive pingbacks, just like a blog post
• All javascript has been moved to jQuery
• Optionally allow login via email address as well as username
• New meta API allows arbitrary meta data to be stored for posts, topics, forums, options, tags or even meta (that’s right, meta-meta – first legitimate use wins a prize)!
• Display names used primarily for user identification display, which allows special characters to be used
• Themes can now have a “functions.php” file, which is automatically loaded
• Accessibility improvements on forms and in the default theme, including WAI-ARIA roles
• Major overhaul of the admin interface
• Optional Akismet statistics page
• Cute new icons from Ben Dunkle
• Improved use of posts admin to manage spam
• Prettier Kakumei (default) theme
• Hello Louie! Plugin

If you are upgrading from any earlier release to 1.0 then you absolutely should backup all you files and database before doing so. You also may need to make minor adjustments to your templates. Before upgrading, disable all plugins.

Download bbPress 1.0 | Installation Guide | Upgrade Guide