I have a dilemma that I cannot solve. The more I think about it, the more I attempt to balance the pros and cons, the more perplexing it gets.
The Current Sitiuation
I have a site running Invision Power Board that allows users to collaboratively plan and organize a national car meet. Lately, I've decided to switch this site to Drupal. Here is where my dilemma begins.
To Convert, to Integrate, or to Use Both
That is the question. My first plans were to convert the users and their passwords over so that the entire site - including forums - would be powered by Drupal. The drawback I see with this is major unfimiliarity with the users. While I like the Drupal forum set up, it isn't the 'Avatar-showing, post-counting, familiar friend' that Invision, VBulletin, and phpBB have become to so many people. I know I can add bbcode as an input format, but I don't want my users to feel like they're in an alien word, you know?
So then I thought:Hey...why not integrate the two?!. My thinking with this was to integrate the usernames/passwords so that they work across both systems, and only use Invision for the forums, and Drupal for the Pages, Stories, Comments, etc. That's when I realized what a headache and a lot of work that would be.
Next stop: Using both. The sure-fire wire to make things easy for the users would be to continue using Invision for the forums, and not allow comments or registerring of users within Drupal. I could easilly theme Invision to look right at home in my Drupal site. But again: here is where it gets tricky.