Thanks for the feedback. :)   To give a small status update, we\'ve decided to scrap Joomla CMS.  It\'s really pimp and powerful but frankly the complications of the backend make the design of the front-end limiting.  I think the reason why the forums don\'t seem as intuitive as others is because of the colour scheme i went with--Buttons are difficult to read.  The integration of IRC/shoutboxes/wiki/galleries/etc  directly with joomla is really sweet but the design drawbacks simply arent worth it for a mostly Static site like floasis.

So anywho, I have a (tested myself) working forum converter to pull us over to SMF, and then from there we can scrap Joomla altogether and start work on hacking up a much pimper design (that will likely be flashbased, sorry low-bandwidth folks).