[wiweeyum]

I’ve researched this topic for about a week now, and am more confused now than before I started.

I’m trying to achieve what http://www.wp-united.com does with phpbb forums. Meaning I want users to be synced, and I want blog posts to be topics. I’d just use wp-united, but the author has year long hiatus’ that really leave the adopters screwed. So, I don’t really know where to go for my client.

I have a phpbb forums with several years of posts and users that I’d like to bring to something more integrated.

Currently I’m testing Simple:Press, but it can’t post previously started topics into blogs (only new ones… this is a really important feature to me), it has no importer to bring in information of users and topics from phpbb, and it’s butt ugly with no ability to customize the theme past simple color changes.

Is there a setup I can use that will give me similar results? I’ve read about people using bbpress + buddyress + wordpress for some cool integration, but will that help me in my situation? I don’t want to sink days into a setup that’s not going to do what I actually want it to do.

So, if you were going to build a blog with a deeply integrated discussion based community into it, where the blog and discussion platform were connected tightly… where would you look? What platforms would you use, and what plugins/hacks would you do to make it possible? I’m totally at a loss for where to start looking.