With a little looking around I think I’ve answered my own questions, but I’ll reply to myself in case it helps others:
– yes, you can have private groups that have private conversations
– I’m not sure if the admin can sign up individuals from the admin and start private conversations from the admin, but I’m thinking if the admin had an account they could start groups and discussions like a regular user, and being a member of those areas can be an advantage.
uuhh – bbpress seems pretty good, but as far as restricting access to certain conversations to certain logged in members one plugin is antiquated with no admin section for my client (sad since it had the beginnings of what I need) and another restricts access to categories of users but not specific users – dang
Obviously I am new to researching a forum solution – maybe I’ll have to move to something like phpbb2, yay
