We use a plugin system called Jfusion that allows us to link the Forum and Joomla user databases this has several unique features that allow the experience to be more streamlined.

Some things you will notice are that your avatar from the forums is shown on the left side of the webpage. This is a feature of this plugin as well as the latest activity below it. Also when you login to Joomla your are automaticaly logged into the forum as well and when using the forum link in the menus above you will load the forums inside of a wrapper making your experience as fluid as possible.

Once we can get a forum skin designed that will match the Joomla skin closer the integration will be more seemless looking and maybe even so good you will not be able to tell they are seperate peaces of software.