BuddyPress & bbPress

Howdy Folks,

I’m searching for someone who has legit experience with using BuddyPress and bbPress together. We are considering integrating both into our existing site at https://www.theworshipcommunity.com.

The blog/magazine style part of our site is simply WordPress driven, and has been for years. The forum section is driven by vBulletin. The two are not connected. We don’t get WordPress users signing up since the only users are a few of our admins/editors who post the blog content.

We’re considering a pretty massive overhaul and I keep coming back to the concept of making it more of a “community” like the name implies.

bbPress is a no-brainer, since we already have forums that we want to migrate off of vBulletin.

My main question is whether or not that would be enough (keep the blog/ezine articles going in WordPress, and just use bbPress for the forums).

I’m pretty clueless – so would value any feedback or input I can get from people who have used either/both.

FYI: I’m aware, at least, on the surface level, of the difference between the two plugins — one is a community/social media type platform where you can have a user profile, activiy feed, “friends”, groups, etc., and another is a forum — I totally understand that already. I’m trying to see if there is value in having both married together, and how that looks to the end-user.

For example, if the ultimate objective of the site is to get people to “JOIN” the community for free (they signup and get on our email list, etc) — what’s the best way to go?

Thanks in advance,
Fred