Can you recommend me a way to integrate a forum?

Hi, I want to integrate a forum into an elgg website,

The way the discussion is built in this website is good,

the main difference I want is that it won't be divided into groups,

the weill be forums that have topics inside, it's not that different from groups except from

the fact you don't have to join the groip, it'll also be nice to be able to add sticky topics and

have a post count for each user, maybe also ranks for users according to their post count.

I saw two plugins, this:

http://community.elgg.org/pg/plugins/project/595616/developer/openid_20296/forum

and this:

http://community.elgg.org/pg/plugins/project/595616/developer/openid_20296/forum

I'm using elgg 1.7.10 right now, haven't upgraded to 1.8 for now.

I know PHP so I can probably take the group plugin or one of these plugins and tweak it,

but I'm pretty slow, so if someone ever did this or has an idea how to do it best,

if I should start with one of those plugins or work from the group plug-in.

I can really use your help, thanx in advance!