[kh99]

Is it that you're not familiar with bitfields, or that they aren't working like you'd expect?

If it's the first one, then I guess the answer is that it basically adds together the values for each permission. You can check for a particular permission by using the & operator (bitwise AND), like "if ($forumpermission & 64)" will be true if permission 64 is set (whatever that is). It makes a lot more sense if you look at the values in binary, since each permission value will correspond to one bit in the number.

If you understand all that but they aren't working like that, then I don't know.