I want to configure my WordPress blog.  I want to remove the comment input fields on the blog post.  The comments themselves will be inputted by another means through a joined forum database.  How do I remove the comment input fields?  I am told it has to do with opening the single.php file in a text editor.  Is that right?

I have been giving this a lot more thought.

I think that instead of removing the comments area completely (I was thinking that I would just direct them to my forum which is in sync with the blog), I will have an intermediary step for first time comment posters in the blog.

A plug-in must exist for what I want to do.  I just need to have people who are familiar with it to point me in the right direction.  On the other hand, perhaps I need to do do the modification to the comments.php code like you have said.

Here is the simple modification I want to make to my WordPress blog. Will you please tell me how I can do this? When I new person wants to make his first comment to the blog and he clicks on the comment link, he is taken to a new page or form just before he is taken to the place where he can enter his name, email address, and the text. How can I do this?
 
Let me give you an example of what I mean. Suppose I charge for membership on my web site and users have to first sign up with paypal. This would be done just one time and only for new users. If someone wanted to post a comment on my blog, the process for registration would require an additional page that they would see prior to them making their first comment.
 
Can you please tell me how I would do this?

I have bbPress in sync with my WordPress.  I thought that I would do this modification on the bbPress and direct the user log into the bbpress side first.  But I think this will be a bigger headache.  I knew that the first step was to make sure the blog and the forum had a theme I wanted to keep because maybe I need to modify the theme to make this work.

Well, now I have a theme installed that I know I am going to keep. It matches what I have in bbPress too. After going over a few scenarios, I now think I will just post a link to the forum in the blog. But I still would like this intermediary step for first time comment posters who sign up.