I wanted to run this by the forum.... (I've also run this by Smartsocial's site). Has anyone had any success integrating SmartSocial groups with the DNN forums in the following way, or put any thought in this general direction: I'd like to have group level forums using SmartSocial plus DNN's base forums, so each group can have a free forum. I realize DNN by nature is not responsible for doing this, but any guideance would be appreciated. From my perspective, is seems relatively simply by creating a group specific forum when each group is created, and assigning permissions at the same time. The group forum name would be "Name of group" + " group forum". These group forums would be a contained within a subdirectory of the site-wide forums, so as to segregate them from the general site-wide forums. This naming allows linking directly to the group home page. The group owner would be assigned moderator permissions on his own forum, his members permissions and other board permissions would be set based on the group's permissions (such as private/public, etc.). (I'd also generate an intitial "charter" post in the forum that links back to the group, provides join details, etc.". Is this fairly easy to setup? It seems to be a simple matter of writing the data into each appropriate forum table upon group creation. If someone knows which forum tables would need to have the data inserted, and/or any sample script to inject the data into the tables, that would be a nice start.

Appreciate the advice, and I haven't made my final decisions yet (one of the reasons I'm trying to see if anyone has succesfully done this yet).  Of course, I'm not the only one trying to reinvent this wheel (every month or two a new free social suite pop's up for customers of a CMS like DNN, including 4 or 5 options for DNN at various prices, at least two of which are free right now).  I'm still waiting to hear what DNN has planned in this arena with their included modules.  It was reiterated in their latest conference as being on the plate of things to do down the road, but with almost no published details.

Re: Active forums:
I like Active forums.  I like their setup - especially after their latest release.  I don't like the (relatively large) recurring billing theme.  I haven't seen any info on their subscription renewal pricing, so I'm assuming it's going to be around $400 annually to stay up-to-date.  And, I doubt, but I'm not sure, if I get access to the source code with their product (so I can fine-tune for my own usage on my site).

Additionally, their product isn't complete yet (but definitely getting better).  For example, without tags and/or categorization, the groups feature and other tools lose a lot of their appeal for larger sites.  If you can't find the group by category/tag, then the gradually lose a substantial portion of their function on a site with 100+ groups (unless all groups are all very similar in nature such as all being boyscout dens, or departments of a school listed alphabetically).

I REALLY DO like the way they broke each set of tools into different tiers (Site/Group/Personal).  Especially their events tools, etc.  That was really smart.  And, obviously, I like the fact that they have a high quality forum integrated at the group level.

I don't mind spending $400 for the base product (if it had proper categorization/regional search/ and tagging) - if it had an affordable subscription renewal (like say $50/year).  But I have a big problem paying recurring $400 per year (or thereabouts).  Access to the source code for one site's usage is also important.

Re: SmartSocial:

SmartSocial has all but dropped support for the product - that's their main drawback.  I have hopes someone picks up the ball on this one, because this was a really, really good product - certainly on par with what Active Social is doing.  The other drawback is the lack of only two features: 1) lack of being able to completely separate the group events from the site wide section (along with no group only calendar display at the group level), and 2) the lack of integration with a forum at the group level.

The advantages: Free, free access to the source code so you can fine tune it for your site's usage, and really good navigation features by itself, or if integrated with other high quality/affordable packages.  On the live/demo poker site using SmartSocial, it has beautiful integration between groups, blogs, group blogs, friends, tagging, categorization, a wall/comments tool, and regional search/browse.  Additionally, at least on the poker site, SmartSocial integrates really well with Ventrian's suite of products.  Combining the two produces a very, very high quality product for around $50 per year for the Ventrian suite.  The biggest missing feature is the lack of connection to the forums at a group level (which is what I hope to solve).

So, I'm weighing my options.  I really like Ventrian's product suite, and have big plans for that.  To this point, I'm 50/50 on which package I like better.  But with one being free and proven to work alongside Ventrian's products, and the other being really good, but relatively expensive (if you include the subscription renewals), and both packages being about equal at this stage, I obviously prefer SmartSocial at this point.

Lastly, I like the theory that if one could get the base (free) DNN forums to integrate with SmartSocial, then it would appeal to a much broader userbase than Active Social does.  In particular, by having a quality/free grouping and social networking software (SmartSocial) connected to the base DNN forums, it would allow many DNN users access to quality social networking tools free.  That's really the point of DNN community in the first place, and SmartSocial would be a natural extension of that.  For that matter, DNN could likely integrate Smart Social into their product suite due to SmartSocial's current status.  Competition is good for the end users, and keeps the pricing under control.  I'm not saying Active Social's pricing is horrible, just that the renewal expenses are prohibitive.  DNN would be smart to take a look at the free grouping features SmartSocial has, but DNN does not.  It takes a social network from one level (ie. a dating or friends site) to a completely different level (groups of friends, clubs, departments, etc.).  I hope DNN's future Social networking tools include grouping, because they'd be missing the boat by not utilizing that feature.

One last comment.  I am already 90% sure that connecting a forum to SmartSocial can be fairly easily done manually.  (In other words, a group owner requests admin to manually add a group only forum to his group).  It essentially just requires the admin/site owner to create a forum with the group's name, and set appropriate permissions (such as private/public, moderation ability to the group owner, etc.).  On the group home page, you just need a link (probably with some simple elseif scripting) back to the forum (which can be easily automated, because the group name matches with the name of the group forum (that name is the key to easily connecting the two).  I'm no expert on ASP.Net or DNN, so I cannot automate this process through programming myself at this point (though if DNN were a Perl or asp product I could accomplish this in VBScript, and other languages).  So, I'm wondering if this has already been done, of if SmartSocial, or DNN have thoughts of doing it now.  This "Fix" would appeal to a large audience of current/future DNN users due to high quality combined with free, and help to set DNN one step further from their competitors if integrated directly into DNN's included modules (including PHP CMS's).