Thank you so much for the quick reply. I appreciate the tips concerning configuration, but I may need some more advice with respect to avoiding the single point of failure that this approach would introduce. The reason for having more than one server is more one of reliability and easier maintenance (you can do major updates while the other servers run) than of load balancing.
Having one main instance of SQL Server is fine. But, is there a way to have a local copy, something like a cache of the main data set, on the web server? Is there a common configuration whereby you use SQL Server Express for this? Something like the forum could use SQL Server Express on the local machine, and SQL Server Express synchronizes with the main server, but if that one is unreachable, things still work (with some acceptable desynchronization during the outage).
Also, I saw in other posts that there is no detailed or supported procedure to convert aWeb Wiz Forums Access database to SQL Server format. I'd find one useful, too.
Thanks again.