[BarryB64]

sIt sounds like you just need a forum, which would be bbPress. The reason bbPress and BuddyPress are separate plugins is that this allows people to pick and choose according to their needs.

What you need to figure out first is, what do you want and need?

This is precisely where my mind was, yesterday. 🙂 Thank for the directed question and the link mentioned by mercime. I’m getting a better picture of two things.

The document provided clarity on the difference between a sitewide forum and the group forum. I needed this; regardless of app. Here’s the plan:

I want to create two distinct group forums. The first is “Shore Classified”. I want this to be a private group forum and not open to the public. This is where I’ll have individual forums dealing with specific topics relating to that forum. Ex. Business forum handle businesses in the Shore area. Another forum is Help Wanted.

I was planning to open this to a specific group of people. I am initially thinking the people in my church and others in the Jersey Shore area. Right now, I’m questioning what should be in that type of forum; as I am concerned with safety. So, I am open to alternative to what type of forum. I’d also like a forum where blog writers can share new stories they’ve written.

The second group forum is PUBLIC. This group forum is where I want people to go. This will need further developing. My initial thoughts is to create forums for popular area of interest. I did see a plugin that will create topics from my sites blog posts.

[BarryB64]

Thanks for replying. 🙂

I like the idea of integrating Social media into the base forum. So, bbpress is the workhorse and takes care of the forum. This would include user groups, permissions, roles and all the other wonderful things associated with forums. While BuddyPress takes care of the social media aspects ala Facebook and Twitter. I’m sure there’s more to it.

It sounds like Simple:Press is a relative indicator of what those two apps are becoming. Here’s my problem. I need an interface that organizes all the forum related tasks. I’m finding the setup with BuddyPress & bbpress to be a little intimidating.

I hope the LabZip guys come out with a more current video. I was wanting him to go into better details on all the options for setting up roles, permissions and etc.