This is a known feature of the wonderful and simple (sarcasm intended) bbPress and wpmu integration mechanism.
Try this:
http://michaeleagan.com/plugins/wpmu-enable-bbpress-capabilities/
This goodie enables new wpmu users as ‘members’ instead of ‘inactive’. You’ll have to go through and edit all existing users to take ’em out of the ‘inactive’ bucket.
I’m pretty sure this is planned to be included in the first official release. However, in the interim, you can install bbPress on its own and integrate it with WPMU no problem and use it as a general forum.
Hey Andy, I’m sure your busy getting the beta ready and all but just wanting to check the status of the group forums… is it looking likely that group forums will make the feature list for the Dec 15 beta or should we be looking to implement an alternative forum solution for now?
Appreciate all your hard work on BuddyPress… you’re making all our lives that much easier! 
Tyna:
The IE and avatar issues are known and fixes are in progress. There’s no timetable but as soon as the problems are resolved the fixes will be rolled out.
As a fix for the improper titles (“Nothing found for…” etc.) I highly recommend installing the All in One SEO Pack Plugin. Besides being the best SEO plugin for WordPress imo, it will also take care of those titles, replacing them with the title of your choosing. I use my site title, for example.
Finally, the bbPress dual-login issue is a WPMU and bbPress cookie issue, not an issue with BuddyPress. I’ve found it’s easiest to just have users login a second time rather than mess with the cookies until the bbPress component is added to BuddyPress and bbPress 1.0 is finalized.
We’ve been working with Lisa Sabin Wilson of eWebscape who built a custom BuddyPress installation on our newly launched site http://www.weheartthis.com
(Andy – We love it so far and think it will really help us build a great community!)
Some of the biggest issues we’ve faced:
1) IE issues – page alignment is off, toolbars do not work, lots of 404 messages (we’ve encouraged our members who use IE to download Firefox or Safari instead, fingers crossed that the official release will help with some of these bugs)
2) We have the same avatar cropping issue as mentioned by other posters – it’s very hit or miss for us, sometimes it works fine, sometimes it just can’t be done at all)
3) The browser title bar will read, “oops, that’s a 404 page” or “nothing found for ____” even when it isn’t a 404 page or it has found something.
4) We have installed BBpress forums as well. The password and login of our member works for both applications, but members need to login at second time when they land on the forum main page (even if they have already logged in earlier)
Thanks (and any feedback on the site is appreciated.)
That is part of the roadmap and I believe it will be in the first release of buddypress as well.
hey…..im running a german site called iBlogle.de
Im also using a bbPress Forum with it…..forum.iBlogle.de
And the Ipod Touch News Blog iTouchable.de is also hosted by BuddyPress with its own bbPress forum…forum.iTouchable.de
And all these Sites are usable with only one Account….although ive a little problem with the cookie sharing between the TLD….so one has to login into both pages!
I am considering creating a social network, and I wish to pre-define the groups, which would therefore provide structure to the forum topics within groups. If the network members were allowed to create groups, I see potential overlap (in my particular community) in topics, discussions, etc. I wish to keep it simple to my own pre-defined groups or groups I choose to add in the future. Quoting from About Buddy Press:
“Groups also include a group forum (bbPress), wire, and photo gallery. These features can be selectively disabled by group creator.”
When I enable the group forum, I believe that limiting group creation will keep forums more organized and therefore, more easily navigated by members.
So that’s why.
If this isn’t possible, then I would ask, is it possible to use the forum without the groups? Or would that entail a separate installation of bbPress?
Hooray. I’m now a member. I gave myself a first and last name and now bp thinks I’m a member. Didn’t I read something about some controversy over usernames/first last names? Must be I gotta have a name to socialize. admins don’t socialize anyway.
It would help if you guys turned on search in bbpress. Ya, I know where it is by URL but I get frustrated and don’t think of that. 
Mornin’ people!
I’m guessing that line in the FAQ is out of date. I’m currently using it fine on 2.6.2 and will report any problems when I upgrade to 2.6.3, but I as long as you stay in the 2.6.X line you should be okay.
You should use 2.6.1 as say in FAQ
BuddyPress is being developed on the latest stable release of WPMU (2.6.1). Please don’t expect it to work on the latest build in SVN.
I used WPMU 2.6 and bbPress 0.9, but if you’re going to attempt to sync the cookies/logins use 1.0 Alpha.
Great news, but what’s your bbpress and wpmu version please ?
Yep, I’ve successfully integrated the users, but couldn’t get the simultaneous login to work but that’s very minor. I’m going to do some tweaks to bbPress to redirect to their BuddyPress profile so users don’t have two profiles to maintain but it’s prett straight forward.
Thanks Andy! We’ll be looking at the forum and other BP parts later. By then you may have released the first stable version… but good to know that the integration with BBPress is taking shape.
I’ve integrated bbPress with WPMU to share user logins (couldn’t get cookies to work unfortunately) and was preparing to launch them both this week. Should I hold off on launching bbPress until you’ve integrated it more fully, or would I be okay using the system as I have it now and simply adding the BuddyPress forum functionality down the road.
Thanks!
Looks really great! Fantastic to see real world examples of BuddyPress in use.
Hopefully you’ll be able to add more features soon once their a bit further along. Sam Bauers and I worked out a way of integrating BBPress with BuddyPress, without integrating them completely. That way you can keep BBPress up to date within your installation. I’ll be adding that in soon.
There are also user online plugins for bbPress for those who have integrated forums and are looking for other alternatives, though the one I linked above definitely works with MU.
I’m looking forward to the chat plugin duanestorey. I’ve hosted chat rooms before but it’d be nice to have one that ties into the MU/BuddyPress login system.
Until the bbPress integration is fully done with BuddyPress I just integrated bbPress with WPMU. I’d speculate that the global forum should actually be the easiest to implement since bbPress can already integrate with MU’s user tables.
Also, will the bbpress dashboard be in the buddypress dashboard? Meaning, not 2 seperate installations?
Thanks a bunch.
Matt
I guess it’s all dynamic, so’s the bbpress feed too?
Also are the member widget tabs dynamic or hard coded?
I’ve talked with Sam a bit about this, and it seems the best way to do it would be to include one installation with every BuddyPress install.
With one installation, a single forum could be generated for each new group created. I’m not sure about a “global” forum yet, but I assume the same could be done for that too.
