Forums, News and Polls in nopCommerce 5.0: Now Plugins, and How to Keep Your Content

If your store uses forums, news or polls, the nopCommerce 5.00 upgrade needs one extra step. This guide covers what moved, what happens to your content, how to get everything back, and two problems the upgrade doesn’t fix for you: menu links and custom themes. It’s based on the 5.00 source code.

What changed in nopCommerce 5.0

Up to 4.90, forums, news and polls were built into nopCommerce, under Content management in the admin area. In 5.00 the nopCommerce team moved each one into its own plugin, so stores that don’t use them no longer carry the code. The plugins come with the download; you don’t buy or download anything.

Scroll the table sideways to see every column.

Once installed, each plugin adds its pages back to the admin area in the same place, under Content management. Forums and news keep their URLs.

What happens to your content when you upgrade

The upgrade doesn’t delete anything, and it doesn’t install the plugins either. Right after upgrading:

• Your forum, news and poll data is still in the database, untouched.
• The storefront shows none of it. /boards, /news and every news item URL return “page not found”.
• The admin area has no Forums, News or Polls pages.

When you install a plugin, it picks up where 4.90 left off:

• Creates its tables only if they don’t exist, so your topics, posts, news items, comments and votes stay where they are
• Keeps every setting you already have and only adds defaults for settings that are missing
• Moves the related CAPTCHA and sitemap settings from the core into the plugin’s own settings
• Moves the old forum, news and poll permissions to the plugin’s permissions, with the same customer roles
• Adds its email templates only if they don’t already exist, so edited templates are kept

Getting forums, news and polls back

1. 1Before upgrading, back up the database and note which of forums, news and polls you use. The free StorePulse plugin lists them as part of its 5.00 check.
2. 2Upgrade to 5.00. Forums, news and polls disappear from the storefront and the admin menu at this point.
3. 3In Configuration → Local plugins, install Forums, News and Polls as needed, then restart the application when asked.
4. 4Open each plugin’s configuration page and check the settings: forums enabled, news enabled, page sizes, CAPTCHA.
5. 5Fix the Forums and News links in your menus (next section).
6. 6Open /boards, /news, a few old news URLs and the homepage to confirm content and links are back.

One forum setting doesn’t carry over: “open links in a new window” for the BBCode editor. The upgrade removes the old setting and the plugin starts with it off, so turn it back on in the Forums plugin if you used it. See our plugin install steps if you haven’t installed a plugin before.

Fix the Forums and News menu links

In 4.90, menu items for Forums and News are “standard page” items that point to a page by its internal name. The plugins register those pages under new names, and the upgrade doesn’t update the menu items. The result is a Forums or News item in your footer or top menu with no working link.

To fix it, go to Content management → Menus, edit each Forums or News item, and choose the page again from the standard page list. The plugins add their pages to that list once installed.

Custom themes that show news or polls

In 4.90, the default homepage called the core’s homepage news and homepage polls blocks directly, and the two-column layout called the side column poll block. nopCommerce 5.00 removes those blocks and the forum blocks from the core. The plugins show the same content through widget zones instead: news and polls at the bottom of the homepage, and polls after the side column.

A custom theme that copied the 4.90 homepage or layout still calls the old blocks. Those calls no longer compile in 5.00, so the page fails until they’re removed. Delete them from the theme’s views and let the plugins’ widgets do the work.

If your theme restyled the forum pages, those views now belong to the plugin. In 5.00 a theme can override plugin views under Themes/YourTheme/Plugins/Misc.Forums/. Our themes guide explains how theme overrides work.

Don’t uninstall them to turn them off

To hide a feature without losing anything:

• Forums: untick Forums enabled in the plugin’s configuration.
• News: untick Enabled in the plugin’s configuration.
• Polls: unpublish the polls, or clear “show on homepage”.

If you really don’t need the content any more, export what you want to keep first, then uninstall.

What stays in the core

• Private messages stay in the core. Their settings move from the forum settings to their own group during the upgrade, keeping your values.
• The blog stays in the core and needs no action.

Forums, news and polls are one of several changes in 5.00 that affect existing stores. Our nopCommerce 5.0 overview lists the others, and the upgrade guide covers the upgrade itself.

Frequently asked questions

Next steps

Run the free StorePulse plugin on your 4.90 store to see whether forums, news or polls are in use, along with the other 5.00 upgrade checks. If you’d rather hand the upgrade over, we do it on a copy of your store first.