bbPress

A member help area can give staff moderation duties without making everyone a Keymaster. Keymasters control global forum settings and tools; Moderators manage discussions and tags. Participants create and edit their own contributions, while Spectators only read. Assign these roles through WordPress's Users screen.

To create a forum, open Forums > New Forum, enter its name and description, choose its attributes and click Publish. A Category organizes forums but cannot contain topics itself. Public forums are visible to everyone, private forums to registered users, and hidden forums to moderators and administrators. Closing a parent forum also closes its children.

For an announcement that should stay visible, create a topic and choose Sticky for its forum or Super Sticky across all forums. Members can subscribe to replies by email.

Install bbPress from Plugins > Add New in your WordPress dashboard, then activate it. Its small core can be extended through plugins. Use the stable download for a live site; the download page lists development builds separately. The software is GPLv2 or later, with hosting and site upkeep handled by the operator.