While it is always more convenient to place as many functions into one centralized site as possible, it is also generally more insecure and prone to problems. Case in point: Forum plugins for WordPress. While I know the desire to have one centralized administration area for a forum and your blog site might seem like a good idea, it is not always in your best interest to have this as your set up. Apparently there is a bug in the current version of the WP-Forum plugin that allows malicious users to access your database information. Whenever you have a situation where you allow users to add content to your site, you create a potentially vulnerable area for someone to exploit. In the case of a forum, this can be especially difficult to program in a manner that eliminates this risk. (note how often most forums have security updates, it’s a lot). So you end up with a case where you now have 2 different site concepts taken out by the most vulnerable element. I almost exclusively suggest that people simply run 2 different sites with 2 different databases and simply match them using a common looking theme. It’s simply more secure to do things that way.

There has been an unscheduled WordPress Security release that upgrades WordPress to version 2.3.3. This is a critical update that closes a vulnerability that would allow registered users to edit the posts of other users if they sent a specially formatted request. It is strongly suggested that all users on the 2.3.x branch upgrade their version as soon as possible.