BuddyPress.org

@ashfame – it’s not quite that simple. Yes, have a standalone installation. Then, to give smooth integration, you also want to ensure you have single sign on (i.e. not having sign on separately for both the forums and BuddyPress network), and you want to see your activity on the forums being shown in your profile activity stream on BuddyPress (this needs callback routines when events happen in the forum software, you’ll have to code these so that they call the BuddyPress activity API correctly).