I have just started to evaluate two Forum add-ons for WordPress. My 15 minute look at either product left me undecided as to which software I should implement for a community website that I am currently working on.

Simple Press looks to be designed and developed from the ground up for integration into WordPress. It looks to have a comprehensive administrative interface and bells and whistles normally associated with dedicated forum software. My first impressions were that it would require significant styling effort to match the site I am working on.

BB Press on the other hand is an independent install which can leverage of a WordPress Installation and can share WP membership accounts and cookie authentication. It has actually been written by the authors of WP and is what they are using for their official Forums. Theming looked straight forward, however the administrative interface is not integrated into WordPress, either are the themes, which would require re-creating so as to match your site. Features are lightweight compared to Simple Press but that is not of a great concern to me.

I was just wondering if anyone out there has implemented either one of these products and what your impressions of them are?