Moving from WordPress.com, some basic Q’s…

Hi everyone,

I run a blog for a club over on wordpress.com (http://sussexmuddyarse.wordpress.com/) but we are starting to find it a bit limiting in terms of flexibility.

Everythings a bit hectic right now so haven’t got time to look through the forums etc in depth but I need to give a yay or nay to someone who has offered us hosting for a wordpress.org based blog, so I apologise for asking the following questions which are probably on the site somewhere (looked for 20 minutes without any luck!)

How similar is the dashboard to wordpress.com? Does it still use authors/contributors etc so I can have different users adding content?
Is there a plugin that provides a forum or discussion board? At the moment we have to link to an external site for our forum, which isn’t popular with our visitors.

And finally, anyone care to link me to their blogs? Just wondered what can be achieved when you are given free reign!

Thanks, hopefully I’ll become a regular on here soon.