If you’re after just a forum, check out the new bbPress plugin: https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbpress/
Thanks, Paul.
What I like about buddypress is the privacy. You can have the outward frontpage showing the yearly schedule & upcoming events, but the discussions would be private and you’d have to register as a member.
If ALL I wanted was a forum, I would start a facebook group. But facebook forums can’t really be searched and they are bulkier to navigate. You can’t have a separate forum for leaders, boy scouts, and cub scouts.
A mailing list wouldn’t be perfect either, too hard to find Useful Pages and too hard for a newbie to find useful information.
There was a useful BP utility plugin called ‘buddypress-restrict-group-creation’ writen by Rich
== Description ==
This plugin will restrict creating groups and group settings to certain WP Capabilities and various member thresholds (forum posts, friends, status updates, days since registered, achievements)
In addition, this plugin will auto-demote the group creator to group mod to ensure group settings may not be modified after creation. You may also define a group admin and mod that will be auto-assigned to all new groups. (requires adding 2 config lines)
It’s no longer being supported so will likely need overhauling to work with BP 1.3 when it arrives. The plugin should be in the BP plugins group somewhere.