Thank you for your compliments! I agree with your sentiment, a forum plugin for Wordpress doesn’t make too much sense. I’m currently using one on this site, but I’m frustrated by the lack of features that Wordpress core has by default, which is why I thought I try and do a Wordpress Forum.

As for integrating it into an existing site… I was going to post about it, but I was reading the wp-hackers mailing list and I came across two plugins: Slave Me Wordpress and Virtual Multiblog.

Slave Me Wordpress allows you yo run a second blog that access the user tables from another Wordpress install. With this plugin you could just create a second blog on your site, have it use the user tables and then install the theme and what ever plugins you want.

With Virtual Multiblog, it allows you to run several blogs off the same codebase with shared user tables so you could share users and plugins among multi-blogs.

As for adding it to an existing WP blog without creating a new blog, I’m not sure tbh. I like the idea, you create a category, flag it as Forum and let it rip. But it requires a lot more functionality, the ability to flag posts and comments as part of the forum and hide them from the main page and RSS feeds, optionally different set of tags for forums compared to posts, extra internal menus, etc. It’s doable but might be more work than I’m ready to do.

I find the logical distinction of using two blogs actually much better because you can have different set of tags for forum and blog, different widgets and plugins active for the forum and blog and you don’t need a new set of menus to manage it all. You can use the “RSS Widget” to show the latest Forum posts in your blog and you can use FeedWordpress to pull blog posts automatically into the forum. I’d imagine that if you were running Wordpress less like and a blog and more like a portal site you’d want tighter integration though, but for a blog that wants a forum, using a second blog with shared user tables sounds like a good way to go about it.

I also tried to keep the CSS and layout pretty simple so that it should be easy to mod to match an existing theme. There is no easy way to make sure one CSS styled output matches an existing styled output. I do want to make some final tweaks to the layout actually, move the user name and icon over to the left with number of posts and comments and their role being printed.

This approach makes it possible for non-programmers like myself to add things to the forum without having to know about hooks and such. Any plugin that works on WP will work on your forum. For instance I use browsniff plugin to report the OS and Browser of posters on one site that is dedicated to Ubuntu. But I can’t use it for the other forum plugins. I don’t know how to hook the hooks, etc.. But with your idea I can do anything with the forum that I can do with any theme. I also use private notes, I could use the same plugin site wide with template tags.

However I do not think you should pursue it as a theme. That is too restrictive. It leaves us with little choices in design. I could call the “TDOMF forum” theme with a theme switcher, but why?
I think you should go the sudo-plugin route. Have it placed in the plugin folder. With the options that you now have already provided where the user can choose which categories are forum topics etc., this method would more freely integrate into each site in both aesthetics and function.

I say sudo-plugin since it would not be a true plugin and not all theme. But the advantages are that it would not add anything to a WP install. It would simply use more efficiently what is already there as well as totally fitting into the current design without modification.

Perhaps you could code it to look at the current theme css file for it’s styling. Therefore when one changes theme, the forum changes style right along with it.

There’s my two cents. Finally someone who isn’t trying to re-create the wheel!!!!!!