Front page

[Daggers]

My suggestion is to tag a front page onto the site. Maybe a blog or even just a feed of recent forum posts with some gaming news etc.

A front page like that would rank higher up in google and more people would visit the site and therefore join the forum. There's a great little community feel about this place and I'd love to see it grow!

[MotherGraham~]

I agree. Making a front-page from scratch (perhaps?) isn't all too hard, and having RSS feeds along with some good optmization will only have positive results.

[Daggers]

Yeah I think it will definitely bring more people to the site, and going by the posts I see in the forum a lot of them would make good content to go on the front page.

[Jack]

Affiliating with other websites is also a good idea.

[Steph]

Yes, I like this idea.

[Hyperion]

Without a front page, the index page of the forum will have to do the job of showcasing content. You can try Nexia's Forumhome Newscast. What I like about this feature is that it shows you content within the topics being highlighted. I have the one on my index page set to 2 sample topics and 400 characters to display from each.

[Konrad]

I remember talking about this with Jason a lot. He was in favor of it, I was against. I think that the conclusion we reached was that the front page needs to justify itself in content first - and anything we could have done at that point was redundant. Either reposting news from other websites, or reposting the forums.

Are we in a situation where we generate enough content to put something interesting on the front page?

[Steph]

I remember talking about this with Jason a lot. He was in favor of it, I was against. I think that the conclusion we reached was that the front page needs to justify itself in content first - and anything we could have done at that point was redundant. Either reposting news from other websites, or reposting the forums.

Are we in a situation where we generate enough content to put something interesting on the front page?

Damn good point yeah.

I think we've got some good content for now at least.

[Jason]

I'm massively undecided on this. A frontpage can go two ways - it can either be an excellent welcome to the site, allowing new users to get acquainted with the site quickly and regular users to get to what they want quickly, or it can be a huge turn-off, sitting there un-updated for days on end and making the site look far more inactive than it is.

As Konrad pointed (and continues to point out) correctly, content is the issue here - do we currently have enough content and activity to make this worthwhile?

At the moment, my answer is 'possibly'. With MGPBQGT (If you don't know, check the sub-forum in General Gaming) due to make a comeback soon, as well as some of the excellent debates we get, and filled out with a little gaming news here and there, we could probably manage it quite well.
The concern is that if the forum goes through a quiet swing (which all forums do, but on smaller ones it's more noticeable than most), finding content might be difficult.

I'll raise this one with the staff, and we'll tear the meat from the bones in private, but I'd also like to see the opinions of the users on this one, so if you have one, please put it forward! :)

[Archangel]

Personally, I've never liked front pages. I only enjoy small forums, and small forums do not need a front page.

For starters, it will get looked at once, by anyone, and then y'all will realise that, having signed up and become a member, the User CP and New Posts button (kudos to you on having one that works properly; too many forums have a new posts button that keeps showing you posts very much un-new) is better. Secondly, they're generally cluttered and annoying to navigate in light of, well, the User CP and New Posts button.
Furthermore, a front page is for a big forum, so all that clutter of the front page is actually less than the clutter of the forum itself, therefore making it useful. In a place like MG, though, there's not much need, nor purpose, as the forum directory is pretty basic, the layout is simple, and the whole place is easy to find your way around as is.

If our newbies need a front page just to figure this place out... I can't guarantee you'll have intellectually stimulating conversations ;).
That said, though, if you're bored, then why not make one? I'll never use it. I have a User CP (take it away and I will devour your children). But the only thing it can hurt is your free time and patience; have at, good sir.

[Hyperion]

Archangel hit the nail on the head, as the idiom goes.

If you want to do more to highlight content for guests or members, I would much prefer you do that on the index page. The suggestion above is one way to go about this. You may also make guests aware of an RSS feed of the forum content by making the link prominent. Lastly, you may try adding a sidebar, and add blocks for such purposes as "latest discussions" (that would look redundant, though, since the titles of topics last posted in are already displayed under "Last Post" on the index page) and "latest articles" (for particularly good write-ups). I do not care much for a side bar, and do not even use that for the default style on my forum, but it is nonetheless a suggestion for highlighting content. Also, a sidebar on this fixed/"skinny" style would look especially silly. If you were to add one, in any case, I recommend the ability to remove it on a per-member basis, though that may be tricky to code.

While I am on the subject of sidebars, I remember AdminAddict having an RSS link to correspond with each block.

[MotherGraham~]

While I am on the subject of sidebars, I remember AdminAddict having an RSS link to correspond with each block.
Well, there is the possibility to add an RSS icon to the cells of each forumbit, which corresponds with specific content (of XX forum) for each individual one.

Check attachment for an example of what I (and you, I assume) mean.

[Hyperion]

Yes, it is my understanding that there is a ready-made vBulletin3 modification for this available at vbulletin.org (I came up with several relevant results by searching "vBulletin 3.8 Template Modifications" for "rss"). Another way to go about it is to just add one RSS icon for the forum in general, which is what I did. In other words, I added an RSS icon near the footer of each style of my forum...

That reminds me: I need to add one to the style I just added.

[MyNameDidntFit]

Personally, I've never liked front pages. I only enjoy small forums, and small forums do not need a front page.

For starters, it will get looked at once, by anyone, and then y'all will realise that, having signed up and become a member, the User CP and New Posts button (kudos to you on having one that works properly; too many forums have a new posts button that keeps showing you posts very much un-new) is better. Secondly, they're generally cluttered and annoying to navigate in light of, well, the User CP and New Posts button.
Furthermore, a front page is for a big forum, so all that clutter of the front page is actually less than the clutter of the forum itself, therefore making it useful. In a place like MG, though, there's not much need, nor purpose, as the forum directory is pretty basic, the layout is simple, and the whole place is easy to find your way around as is.

If our newbies need a front page just to figure this place out... I can't guarantee you'll have intellectually stimulating conversations ;).
That said, though, if you're bored, then why not make one? I'll never use it. I have a User CP (take it away and I will devour your children). But the only thing it can hurt is your free time and patience; have at, good sir.

My opinion is in this box.