[John James Jacoby]

@mikepratt, Burt nailed it on the head, but I’d like to add that I think many people are still stuck in the forum world, and haven’t peeked their heads out to see that social networking has evolved in the past 5 years or so. I know on lots of car or video game forums, it’s basically just a free for all chat fest, and trying to convert those minds into using BuddyPress or WordPress alone is too big of a change; I’ve tried it twice now with little success. Having a dedicated familiar looking forum but using BuddyPress to emphasize the social atmosphere helps those stubborn users transition a little easier and allow them to fallback on the features of a dedicated forum in the event it doesn’t work out.

@burt, I noticed on your Common Interest site that you have the forums separated between public and group. I would like to do something similar, and am curious as to how you did so. Also, is there an easy way to tap into the profile fields/user information from BuddyPress and display it as post author information in bbPress?