[wottech]

Since someone asked about it over on vb.com, I was able to finally get this to work with some success. I used ragtek's code and placed it in a new Forum Block using a PHP content type. My goal was to use the Section Navigator in the forums, so my code looked like this:

bootstrap_framework();
vBCms_View_Widget::registerTemplater(vB_View::OT_XHTML, new vB_Templater_vB());

$widgetID = 16; // the id of the widget

$widgettype = 'SectionNavExt'; // type of the widget you want to output

$widget = vBCms_Widget::create('vBCms', $widgettype, $widgetID);
$output = $widget->getPageView()->render();

For the template, I made a copy of the normal Section Navigation widget template so that I could edit it for the forums. I also used the "Everywhere Sidebar" mod on here to be able to place the menu on all areas of the site.

Now the bad part... I could never get the CSS to work properly to display the menu the same in the forums as it was displayed in the CMS. It basically was just a bulleted list that wasn't collapsible. If someone figures out that part, then I would definitely use it again.