Would it be relatively easy to make a gold mod? Like a user posts and gets +0.5 gold; and starts a new topic for 1 gold.. just to start this out.. and then I eventually want a store.. but gotta make money first to spend it? :P

The thing you are talking about is called "points system". We have it in plans, however, not so close plans. I think, it is not difficult to make this system as plugin, if you have experience in PHP. I have read somewhere on our forums that some users already have implemented this for their projects. Putting the plugin in bb_plugins.php, you always have $action defined - and basing on this, you can add or remove points for any user.

well.. i figure it's just as easy as adding 'user_points' as a row to the DB... then just making it so new topic makes user_points go up a numeric.. but i'm really bad with SQL queries. :(

It's not very easy, because on each action (adding new topic, or reply, or file - if with file addon plugin, - or don't forget that admin also can delete topic or post) you need to plus a different value. But yes, you can have additional column in database; however, it would be cool also to have some kind of history for users points, incl. withdrawals. Just for any case - so you may restore this column at any time.

This topic is relevant? Or was abandoned and no longer be raised? The fact that something like this for me now write.

I was thinking about this addition for a long time, and it appears a very custom solution for each customer. I.e. what this system will work for, how you withdraw points, how you count points (i.e. basing on what), how busy are forums and so on.

So it may discussed individually with each customer. We have no *standard* solution in this aspect.