Re: Stupid Question: how to differ BuddyPress and Buddypress Plugin for WP?
@ganesi Buddypress is a plugin for a wordpress blog. Once activated on the wordpress blog, BP components/features/functionality will only fully work if you have a theme that is compatible with the Buddypress plugin.
The buddypress plugin comes with a default theme you can use. And that is a Buddypress default setup, I think that is what you might be refering to as “standalone” bp. its not really standalone, it’s a theme that comes with the BP plugin that you enable first then activate the BP plugin.
the buddypress plugin itself is a suite of “plugins” including the forums. Once you have a bp ready theme and buddypress plugin activated you can then activate the forums component(“bbpress plugin”) in the bp admin. once you have the forums activated you can then add additional features to your BP-forum by way of more Bp forum specific plugins. phew.
hope that helps, i kinda confused myself for a minute there. that’s a lot plugins on plugins crisscrossing there. 
