2 forums in 1 bulletin board - help please

I have a forum we use for our homeless (http://forums.homeless.org.au) site themed for one set of members.

I want to add some more categories completely unrelated to homelessness to act as a support forum for some webmaster software we are going to release soon.

How do I combine, or more to the point seperate out these two communities in the one forum?

It doesn't matter if either community wants to have a look around in the other community and they can both post in either community, thats fine (not that they probably will).

But I want to customise the forum for the software customers so:
1. when they first enter the forum they don't think... I just walked down a dark alley and am pretty sure I'm in the wrong place.
2. and when they move around the software support forums they don't get sent to the main index for all the forums as they navigate.

Is it possible to have two different sets of graphic design and navigation for the two seperate communities?

The homeless forum was donated by vBulletin, so couldn't really afford to buy another one for the software support forums and wouldn't be likely to get one donated for that purpose either.

hmmmm

It would take some creativity -

You could make a set of forums & subforums - and then link to that set of forums for the support side.....

i.e. VB Search Engine Optimization (http://www.vbwebmaster.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=15)


When someone registers - you could require them to chose the forum they want - you could create 2 usergroups - one for each side of the site and set forum permissions according to which part of the site you want each usergroup to view. You would have to moderate new members and then assign them to one or the other usergroup.

The way to get the graphics to change would be to have a default skin for each usergroup -

On the other hand........

You could also direct new members to a static html page for the support site - giving it its own domain - and then have registration directly from that page so you dont have to moderate new users -

SO basically - (I know Im rambling but Im thinking while I type this) you would have a static HTML page for the 'new' site - that would take a new user to a registration page that, by default, sends them to a different usergroup which only has access to the support forums and uses the support skin.

Not sure if this makes sense - but - it could be done I think.

I'm going the easier route and just putting a phpbb up on the software site and keeping them seperate. Thanks for the advice though.