[Fender]

I was able to achieve most of what I wanted to do with almost no core hacks.

I editted my template front-page.php to basically be topic.php but without the re_permalink() ; call and statically setting $topic_id = 2.

The core hack I made was to change functions.bb_templates.php to modify all location query functions to trick it into thinking ‘front-page’ is topic-page instead (these are mostly case statements inside functions like is_front() and is_topic()) , meaning that post.php, post-form.php and /bb-post.php all fuinctioned on my new front page in the same way they would on topic.php. I would prefer to develop a plugin that did this modification, but I don’t have time to make one.

So it essentially does what I wanted it to do, albeit with a core hack that will have to be manually maintained in future releases unless a plugin is developed.

In the last few days, I’ve basically discovered that neither WordPress or bbPress can do more than 60% of what I want, and it’s a different 60% in each case. bbPress has one major advantage for me over WordPress right now, and that is bbPress Moderation Suite. WordPress has nothing remotely resembling it and I doubt I’ll be able to find someone willing to build it, even for cash. But even bbPress Moderation Suite is missing one key thing for me, and that’s email notification to the users, but Nightgunner is working on that one already.