Hello Radenight,
Have you looked into content management systems (CMS), like Joomla? You could then base your site around a pre-existing (usually free and XHTML validated) theme and theme graphics around your town. By using a third-party open source CMS, you put the risk of having to develop massive amount of PHP out of the picture. I would recommend this, especially if you anticipate it to be a highly used site where people may want to create accounts. The only problem would be integrating the CMS into the forum software, and actually making the branding of the site look good, as well as of course, creating content for the non-forum area. I have used Dreamweaver before, but creating a very Web 2.0 site is difficult these days. You will need to do a lot of scripting to get functionality that is already out there. Just my two cents. It will be good to have for customizations if you go the open source CMS/commercial forum route.