[whitewall]

Thanks for the replies.

We have had some performance issues also with phpBB so far, especially with the latest topics and phpBB2’s search system. Also phpBB is too complex for our usage because we need to customize the board for our needs and integrate it into our webzine and other scripts we will use in our website’s next version.

Our combination would be a wordpress installation for a webzine which will be managed by only a small number of our editors but it would be nice to have all our registered users to comment the posts logged in with their accounts.

Then the bulletin board should be readable by all visitors but posting is for only the registered users. We should have our 52 forums categorized in 5 or 6 different groups. And there are also various private forums which should be readable and writeable only by a certain user groups. I guess this is not fully supported by bbPress or it’s plugings yet?

Then we would customize the user profile page and user registration and management system into our own, because there will be paid “VIP” members and free registered users and users should be also categiorized in different groups. Also we have our own solution for the private messaging. I guess all this could be done outside the bbPress.

There are also few scripts of our own such as event calendar, classified ads, galleries etc. which would use the same user management / login system.

So the main usage of bbPress would be handling the forum posting, editing and basic forum stuff and together with WordPress and our own extensions they would make a nice platform for a social networking online community. Maybe some of these customizations and extensions of ours would even be possible to publish as a plugins when they’re ready and working.

We have studied also vBulletin and SMF but so far bbPress seems to be the best bb for our needs.