[chrishajer]

Option 1 is valid. When bbPress comes out later though, WordPress might be higher than 2.6. There might always be a little bit of lag between versions for compatibility, but the idea is sane: upgrade now, then wait for a new version and upgrade again later.

Option 2 is also valid.

Question 1: yes, you can grab any old release from WordPress.org:

https://wordpress.org/download/release-archive/

Also, you need only worry about compatibility if you are looking for integration. Other than that, the versions don’t need to be sync’d up.

And finally, you need to be careful running old versions to be certain there were no security fixes. The move from 2.6 to 2.6.1 had nothing to do with security, but the move from 2.5 to 2.6 did. So I guess 2.5 had some security issues. [citation needed]