Thanks @webbouk for the heads up. In fact, my post might have been misleading. Even though I put UK cities, that was for familiarity, the site will operate in Spain.
I am a web dev so that is an option, if required. But until now I've been on the dark side (.net), so it would be a bit of a learning curve, and I would prefer to spend my time managing the site content instead of fiddling around with the tech stuff. :)
Thank you, that's really helpful. I will look at those docs. (Edit to add: They're actually very handy, and quite accessible to read.)
I actually would like to do website.com/{town} ideally, but I was under the impression we needed the /forums/ slug, or similar.
Something important I omitted...
I’m planning a forum that will eventually cover multiple towns, with each town acting as a top-level node (e.g. Nottingham, Manchester, Brighton).
Conceptually I’m aiming for something like:
Town
Classifieds
Local businesses
Events
General discussion
I understand XenForo uses a /forums/...