so both should be working, even if the subscription confirmation via email is deactivated...
mhhh....
thx.

either the wpmu_new_user or user_register actions should working as both actions are / should be being called on a new user registration.

The inside of the second function you listed is pretty much the same as the first (except it has a weird, unneeded step of unserialising an array before passing it to be reserialised).

found a very similar plugin. the code looks different though, can anyone have a look and see if it looks like it could replace the above one?

function insertbbPressRole($insert_id) {
$capability = maybe_unserialize('a:1:{s:6:"member";b:1;}');
update_usermeta($insert_id,'bb_capabilities',$capability);
}

add_action('user_register', 'insertbbPressRole');

or shall I just replace
add_action('wpmu_new_user', 'enable_bbpress_forum_capabilities'); from the first plugin with add_action(''user_register', 'enable_bbpress_forum_capabilities'); ?

I have been using a plugin to achieve this. The plugin's descriptions says:

When a user clicks on the activation link in the user regsitration email,
user meta data is added to wp_usermeta to enable the 'member' role in bbPress.

Meanwhile I changed the registration process, with your plugin, that removes user email verification so users are no longer clicking/getting the activation link so they are now obviously not getting set up as members anymore.

Here is the plugin code:

function enable_bbpress_forum_capabilities( $user_id ) {
update_usermeta($user_id, 'bb_capabilities', array('member' => true));
return;
}
add_action('wpmu_new_user', 'enable_bbpress_forum_capabilities');

now if I understand this right, all I need to find is another hook to hook into and replace wpmu_new_user, right?

any suggestions to get this code working again?