Potential Solution
phpBB is in the front-running for official (for now) forum software. I found it while searching for such things at work, and it's treating me right so far, after feeding it all the info for my local DB and installing it on local Apache. None of the intricate problems I've had in the past. I've actually set up forums and users on it. These may very well be the forums, assuming I* get the color scheme changed, and/or create a new theme for it; and
* ensure that it can generate mail properly, no matter where it's hosted.
* and probably some other stuff I'm not thinking of just now.
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