Re: Why integrate BB & WP?
AFAIK, there are just a couple reasons to want integration.
1. If you want users to be able to log in once, and comment in WordPress and participate in the forums, then integrated user data is useful.
2. Some people want to integrate their WordPress footer, sidebar and header, so access to WordPress functions get_sidebar(), get_header() and get_footer() are useful.
3. Sometimes people want to share data between the forum and the blog. Maybe a list of latest forum topics in the blog. Maybe they want a new topic created in the forum for every blog post. Integration is useful for that.
I don’t use integration, but I can understand why some people want it.