One of the sites I'm managing here on LunarPages is for a computer user group which has different dues paying membership types. My goal is to have the main site managed through Joomla with the forum using SMF. Setting permissions inside Joomla is going to be fairly simple, as there will just be public and private (member-only) content. Within the forum the permission scheme of things gets far more complicated. 

I had planned to NOT link SMF & Joomla in part because of all of those different access groups inside the forum. Another factor is that many of our members are senior citizens. In the tests I've performed in linking Joomla and SMF, Joomla will wrap its template around SMF's producing a screen display that is VERY hard to read.

If I could figure out how to block Joomla from doing the wrapping, linking the two via a bridge would be the most desireable action. After all, that would avoid the need for people log into the site twice.

At any rate, I have found one very odd quirk in the logins for both products. Joomla's login will only work correctly if the main site is reached via this link:
http://www.cebug.org/
Going to http://cebug.org/ and attempting to login there will not work.
Same problem - but reversed - for SMF. If you go to:
http://cebug.org/forum/
You can login as expected. However going to the forum by:
http://cebug.org/forum/
Will make it not recognize someone previously logged in. I have a feeling I've made some kind of mistake or omission somewhere so it doesn't matter which address form is used. Can someone enlighten me?

Wow! That must be something new in SMF's bridge, or I didn't see it when I tried that before. That  should help reduce confusion quite a bit! Members will only need to remember to use the address for that. Thanks!