bbPress.org

I created a custom page for the forum “home page”. bbPress has clickable breadcrumbs and “Forum” will load the default bbPress forum home, as such I added the following to my .htaccess to redirect the user to my custom page:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule /forums$ /the-forum

This redirects the user:
from: http://ok.thissiteworks.com/forums/ (bbPress forum home)
to: http://ok.thissiteworks.com/the-forum/ (custom forum home)

That works – but only for logged in users. When a user is not logged in the redirect does not work.

1. Can someone advise why this would not work for not logged in users?
2. Is there perhaps a better way to redirect the users to the custom page?