I mentioned this on Facebook, but I wanted to mention it here too. Ive been playing around with the new forum software and I am so happy I chose this one. It does everything we said we wanted and a lot more that I wasnt expecting. I have to say Ive not been this excited about a piece of software in a long time.
It looks like we'll have all of the basic functionality that we have now in SMF. Permissions, ability to create groups and boards in whatever order we want.
What Im super excited about, is the ability to link comments from blog posts into forum topics. When you turn these items on in the forum setup, and set up a post, the post will actually prompt you to see where you want to post the forum topic that is auto created within the forum. From there, all comments that are made from the post page are automatically added to the forum topic and vice versa. If you're a guest and wish to make a comment, the only way you can do so is through the post, not from the forum. WordPress will prompt for a nickname, email address and comment. From the forum perspective, it will show the post as coming from a guest.
The more I play with this thing the more I like it!