[John James Jacoby]

DennisH, it sounds to me like you want BuddyPress + bbPress + WordPress. If you’re not using all three, then you’re really not going to get what you want.

Also, if phpBB just has too MANY features, you could trim some of phpBB’s code out, no different than you can add code to any *Press product.

It also is a relatively new concept (Within 1 year) of having all of these platforms working in unison together. BuddyPress has taken giant strides towards providing a personality to the users on your site, to give your bbPress users profiles and information beyond the basics.

Regarding the “promise” of integration, it’s possible to do within a few minutes, with integrated logins, profile info, etc… The major difference is that you can’t expect it to look like a typical forum is going to look, at least not at its current stage of development.

When you consider that phpBB is 3.0.5, and it stayed in the 2.0 branch for over 7 years, apply that logic to bbPress that JUST turned 1.0 a month ago… There’s still LOTS that can be done, but for now bbPress is a stable and powerful product that is a developers dream platform for forum software to start with. You can mold and shape it to handle just about any task (wait until you see what BuddyPress is going to do with it )

Long story short, I’m sorry you’re disappointed at the moment, but I’m willing to bet you won’t always be. If you need something besides bbPress right now, no one’s feelings are hurt, but my suggestion to you would be to make friendly with it now so you can be better prepared to use it later, when it better meets your expectations.