I have a frames setup on my forums... and I hear that forums are already hard to get indexed, so does this mean that I'm doubly screwed? Or is it possible to have google index a frames page as well as the boards pages within it? My message boards rely heavily on the frames, because we have so much content, it just makes it a lot easier to get around the boards. I guess I could make it part of the template, but for now the frame is where it's at. Any suggestions?

Search around for hacks that add a column to your phpBB forum. I know for certain that this can be accomplished on vBulletin, but I don't know about phpBB.

and I hear that forums are already hard to get indexed

This is because of dynamic URLs. Google (and other search engines) like pages that stay the same (static). Turn on your archive if you have one. Again, I know vBulletin does this and even has something that you can buy to avoid the dynamic URL problem.

and I hear that forums are already hard to get indexed

Nope. I have my forums www.go4expert.com with Archive turned off and I dont have any problems in indexing.

There is a big disadvantage of turning on the Archive that it results duplicate content and so I have that turned off.