Many blog owners have started to build their own forums, both to foster a community around their niche and also to benefit from user-generated content and traffic. Although paid forum software like VBulettin would be the best choice if you had a proper budget, the easiest way to get a forum up and running is to use PhpBB, a free forum software bundled into most Cpanel web hosting accounts.

Installing PhpBB is as easy as installing WordPress via Fantastico, and just by entering a few variables everything is done for you. All you need to do then is to login, create your forums and sub-forums, and get yourself a new forum "skin"

That is usually a major headache if you’re running WordPress and you want your forum to have the exact layout your WordPress blog does. The most common way to do this, if you’re not a coder or designer yourself, is to get a freelancer to build you a new PhpBB theme based on your WordPress blog’s CSS file.

However, Brian Gardner has made it extremely easy for regular people like you and me to perfectly blend our WordPress blogs with PhpBB, if you’re using any of his wonderful Revolution themes.

This is how your WordPress blog / PhpBB forum pair would look like with the Revolution CMS theme:

WordPress Blog Theme	PhpBB Forum Skin

This is how your WordPress blog / PhpBB forum pair would look like with the Revolution Pro Media theme:

WordPress Blog Theme	PhpBB Forum Skin

This is how your WordPress blog / PhpBB forum pair would look like with the Revolution Magazine theme:

WordPress Blog Theme	PhpBB Forum Skin

This is how your WordPress blog / PhpBB forum pair would look like with the Revolution City theme:

Wordpress Blog Theme	PhpBB Forum Skin

As a result I can get massive site that looks professional and clean.

You can see the updated list of all available PhpBB forum skins or themes here. If you don’t have any Revolution WordPress theme, I recommend that you at least get the single-user license to the Revolution Magazine theme or the Revolution CMS theme. It’s a great bang-for-buck and with just a few changes you can make your blogs look great..

How to Create A Single Login for WordPress / PhpBB

One thing most site owners want is to create a single user id and login for both the WordPress blog and PhpBB forum. Before you even try to do this, consider for a while if it’s really worth your time:

• Does your blog require registration? Unless you require people to create their accounts and log into your WordPress blog before making comments on the blog, there is no use trying to integrate with PhpBB.
• Can you handle tech stuff? If you cannot, or don’t have access to someone who can help you, be prepared for nightmares when you upgrade WordPress or PhpBB, or both.

If you decide to integrate, then what you need is a PhpBB / WordPress integration tool called "WP United". Although WP United is free to download and use, it may requires a certain amount of fiddling around before you get it right. Plus, once you DO get it right, make sure you don’t regularly update WordPress or it might just all break down.

According to the site:

WP-United is a new integration package that glues together PhpBB, the leading open source bulletin board, and WordPress, the popular blogging tool.

WP-United is for PhpBB users who want to integrate WordPress into an existing community — perhaps using it as a content management system for articles, perhaps to offer their members personal blogs, or perhaps as a portal page. The choice is yours!

WP-United ties WordPress to a PhpBB community, with login to WordPress (optionally) handled automatically by the integration package.

View a useful forum topic here on WordPress / PhpBB integration issues.