I am looking to create a blog and a forum on a new website. I would like for users to register to post in the forums and post comments on the blog as well as having thier own public profile page.
I have experience with BlogEngine.NET so was looking to use that. I have no experience with .NET forum software at this time so I am researching the options.
Would this be hard to setup?
I would not imagine it would be hard to setup, especially if you manage to find yourself an ASP.NET forum that utilizes the membership provider along with BlogEngine.NET. That way you wouldn't have to try and rig something together to work with what you already have.
The ASP.NET Membership API makes this really simple to do. All you need to do is have both the Blog and Forums use the same Membership Provider and connect to the same data store (most likely SQL Database) and both apps will use the same login and password.
However, if you want to provide a "single sign on" so that they don't need to re-enter their password when navigating from the Forum to the Blog, then you'll want to implement both the Blog and Forum functionality within the same site/application.
As far as BlogEngine.NET; it's really a great starting point for building a website. The Blog and Membership Provider are already there, so all you need to do is add the Forum functionality.
BlogEngine.NET doesn't really have the complete support built in for users to Register on the site using its Custom Membership Providers, but it's really simple to tweak what's necessary to get it working. I did this on the http://communitycodingcontest.org site a while back.
There are a few options for ASP.NET Fourms.
http://www.yetanotherforum.net/
http://www.jitbit.com/asp-net-forum/