What's the best way to integrate Vanilla 1 into my site? I can hack the default templates with headers and footers - but ideally it would be good to just "drop" a link into my template that "includes" the forum. Is this possible?
Don't hack anything in the rootfolder of vanilla, in the libraries, or in the root of theme folder, or You will have to always repeat the change each time you reinstall or update vanilla. Instead create your template or create an extension like Mark explain on the troubleshooting page.