Have some fun if you are going to use PHP BB... They can be made nice if you do some custom scripting... I have a book around my house on coding for it... if you need some help send me an e-mail. I have never been a friend of PHP BB forums... when you can write your own custom coding. (Its boring and takes a long time but is worth it) CD has done a good job with VB and the performance and output of ideas on the site shows that... I mean they have nearly 5,000 membes. I can get you some coding examples from what I remember from my intro to VB and that fun stuff.
Drop me a line if you run into problems.... Programmers always love helping people
-Greg The Great