[TamMcDonald]

Is there a way of turning the current BuddyPress/ bbPress forum into a proper forum?

By that I mean similar to the phpBB forums, or even like the default bbPress forums. A way of having separate forums for different things, and not restricting them to public groups only.

[@mercime]

bbPress is being converted to a WP Plugin https://trac.bbpress.org/roadmap by JJJacoby, Lead Dev of both bbPress plugin and BuddyPress plugin.

Currently, there’s a “Global Forums Plugin” ($30 membership) by at BuddyDev.com that works as a standalone forum on top of the bbPress internal Forum set up and/or works with existing BP Group Forums. I believe it’s scheduled to be updated soon as Brajesh is also looking at the roadmap for bbPress.

EDIT – there’s an interesting post by someone who seems to have integrated an external bbPress with BuddyPress, don’t know how it’s working so far though – https://buddypress.org/community/groups/how-to-and-troubleshooting/forum/topic/what-the-heck-is-wrong-with-my-forums/?topic_page=2&num=15&_wpnonce=46d45d8861#post-95884