ok…the only way I know to make this work for my site, is to have a sticky subject that people see when they first enter the forum. Right now, however, when I make a post (in a public forum) sticky, it won’t show up in the forum (that’s strange) but will when I don’t make it sticky. Is this the way it’s supposed to work?
@allenweiss: That’s the way it is working currently. Stickies are basically excluded from the directory loop at the moment while Andy figures a way to handle them properly. There’s nothing wrong with your installation. 
@allenweiss – The lack of stickies (as well as a directory) on the forum’s front page does need attention in future updates. I understand both items could create a cluttered forums area, but they should be options (perhaps in the forums setup area) available to site administrators.
Currently, forums appear to be an after-thought tacked onto groups, when actually, user behavior makes me think the focus should be reversed; the majority of users, once logged in, head to the forums area, not a group.
WIth the new theme for 1.2 I think that the forums are very secondary to the “what’s new”-box for the personal profile and groups.
If “what’s new”-messages in the activty feed at the frontpage and groups would appear at the top of the list when commented, there’d be no use of the forums at all.
If you’d be able to tinyMCE or attach files to the “what new”-input you’d be another step away from having the forum component.
I guess BP is made for thousands of users. But those of us having about 1000 registered users at the very most (and about 1/5 active of them) will have to make lesser avenues for the users (no blogs, no forums, only personal and groups “whats new”/status update) so that the activity isn’t diluted.
@Tore.. true.. but IF you are running a big community (and that’s what I am aiming for) forums are a really good addition because the activity stream get’s VERY busy.. And we all know it’s much easier to disable something then add it in, so I think more options for interaction are a good thing! It’s just a matter of tweaking BP to make it fit your community, the tools are there!
Hi Bowe,
you are right.
I am beginning to like the Forum, also came to the conclusion that I really do need the forum for the website I am trying to create.
Also, looking at http://www.bbpress.org , it seems Matt is going to push development of the Forum-software to the next step, which is a great initiative.
Well this discussion seems to have covered the topic well, but I wanted to voice my support of the idea of having a site wide forum with its own categories seperate from Groups.
Such forum can act as support and general discussion for the site away from the groups.
Would it be feasable to have a second bbPress install and use that for the site wide forum, or would that conflict with the bbPress already shipped due to tables and credentials?
I started a new thread to pick up where this one left off now that the new SWA has tweaked the model -> https://buddypress.org/forums/topic/new-12-swa-and-blogforum-syncing-feedback-needed
I will add one parting thought here-> IMHO, BP was a welcome change from the old bbPress way which tossed every topic imaginable into a big collection of forum topics. Groups are a way to aggregate subjects and such. I for one am glad there is no giant site wide forum that I have to wade through to find what I want. That’s why I join groups. I have the SWA to browse the entire site full of activity. Bonus
