They are essentially the same, as the bbPress plugin is installed via buddypress upon demand.
We’ve done a little tutorial video to show how you can setup either a BuddyPress Group Forum, a SiteWide bbPress 2.0 Forum, or a custom hybrid forum page using shortcodes. You can have all three at one time. Hope this helps 
http://labsecrets.com/2012/01/23/buddypress-and-bbpress-forums-made-easy/
Cheers!
Spence
http://labsecrets.com
Hi Spence,
Thanks very much for your post. The video really helped. I still have one question though which is about the part where you modify the forums to default to full width.
1. What CSS editor are you using?
2. I installed a CSS editor plugin and when I insert the code you used I am getting the message
“Your active theme does not include bbPress template files. Your forums are using the default styling included with bbPress.”
How can I fix this so it does what I want?
Hi Martin!
Keep in mind that any CSS you run on your main theme, or child theme, will also apply to the core bbPress files as well, so long as you have structured your site properly. As such, you can apply the suggested body class of “.bbPress” and you will be able to modify the content area and sidebar to make a page full-width as we show.
1) I use Smultron or Komodo Edit, but also like Sublime Text;
2) The message you see is, I believe, removed in the latest update to bbPress. Otherwise, just ignore it… (it can be suppressed by adding a line in your wp-config.php file… but why bother as I think it was mentioned here that they are updating this out?)
Hope this helps!
Spence
http://labsecrets.com
It won’t have it im afraid. Does the WordPress theme always take prescedent over the bbpress theme? If so am I wasting my time modifing the bbpress css? What is the optimal way to have this structured?
Thanks again for your help.
Although I’m not clear as to what you may be doing, I can say that the easiest and most direct way to handle this is to modify the controlling css style sheet on your wordpress theme. In almost all cases, if you have not otherwise modified your config.php or other css references, this will allow you to override bbPress styles from your active wordpress theme (or child theme).
The bbPress theme files remain untouched… they are merely modified or styled by the wordpress style sheet. There are no markup changes in this example.
Hi Spence. Ok just to be clear are you saying that if I have made no other alterations to the style.css file then if I add the code below to that file it should make it wide? Sorry I am a novice with WordPress and im just trying to figure out why this is not working. Thanks so much for your help;
/* bbPress Sitewide Forums – Optional – Make full width */
body.bbPress #sidebar {display:none;}
body.bbPress #main {width:100%;}
.bbp-forums {
width: 100%;
}
Hi Martin,
if you are using the default bbPress, then in most cases the CSS indicated will work. The only exception would be, with some themes, that you may have to also (or instead) make the #content area 100% width as well. Also, in some themes you have the #aside as well (or instead) of the #sidebar.
As I don’t know what theme you are using (link?), please use firebug to identify the element ID or Class that is surrounding the bbPress DOM elements.
The very important difference between these two forums
1) Sitewide forums; adding favorite, creating or replying to any topics in sitewide forums does not show up in Members directory. It does however show up in the activity stream.
But with this it gives no ability to keep track of your created or replied to topics.
2) Sitewide forums allow you to make subforums just like wordpress allows you to adress a parent page. You can adress several Subforum to a Parent Forum, so to create the PhpBB structure most forums contain. Group forums will not allow this kind of structuring. You just have 1 Forum per group containing topics.
3) Group Forums however do show up in member directory so you can easily keep track on your created and replied topics under your members profile page using the subnav Forum.
4) To respond to group forums members must join to the belonging group first, where sitewide forums lets anyone who has registered to your page create topics and reply to them.
It might be worth your while to view our latest (updated) video guide for configuring BuddyPress & bbPress, as it goes into some of the differences and features that have arrived with 2.2.2 and BuddyPress 1.6.1
http://labzip.com/the-definitive-guide-to-buddypress-bbpress-configuration/
Cheers!
spence
