BuddyPress.org

Forums are linked to groups. Each group can have a forum.

Personally, I choose to hide the forums tab and display only groups. That way you have to open a group to view and to post to the group’s forum. I found it to be too confusing otherwise.

Posts are just posts, so you might use them to update the main news area of the site or the homepage or whatever….but they are not by nature ‘community’ content.