[Jean-Pierre Michaud]

bbpress is just pointless in the actual structure of Buddypress. too complicated, not enough features for groups, feeds, attachments, feeds…

it’s not a proof of competitivity to keep it included in BP.

wordpress already have everything for a forum, just not the design/redesign…

if we could, by the usage of BP make a blog into a forum, with access to user levels etc, i think it could be fun, i would personally invest in it.

[r-a-y]

bbPress is turning into a WP plugin sometime in the future, probably using the custom post types feature in WP 3.0.

There is some merit in bbPress within BP. It just needs a little love.

[EDIT]

Didn’t know this was an idea thread. I don’t think this is going to change any time soon.

You could try Simple:Press or one of the other WP forum plugins out there.

Scott Kingsley Clark has a port of bbPress working on his WP Pods CMS framework, which could be a good future alternative:

http://www.scottkclark.com/forums/beta-testers-unite/current-status-of-the-forums-package/

[Dwenaus]

I have to agree with nexia. the best approach for simplicity would be to take the good core of bbpress, fork it, and integrate it into buddypress completely. From there it will be easier to integrate new features as group forums grow. as of now, it is a good technological feat, but maybe not the right direction.

The fact is, the majority of what you see in the group forums is buddypress, but bbpress. bbpress is just running the backend engine, which is not that much code. There is probably an equal amount of code written to connect them.