I was just reading the newsletter and it struck me that our site is the forums. I mean, I know we have the word 'forums' in the name, but would we benefit from having an actual site? I mean, the site could be one page, but the links would go to the forums. We could put up recent news, resources and other stuff. I'm not sure if I'm making sense but it would be like a more user-friendly, prettier wrapper that people would see before diving into the threads and posts.
Some kind of portal? This is something I've considered before; however, since the forums are the primary part of the site and since it's on the homepage, removing the forums from the homepage would probably not be widely received well... correct me if I'm wrong.
You can always have the forum page bookmarked so it opens on that page for you, while the homepage opens without the bookmark. I think what the issue would be, you need someone to keep the front page current. Wrey's example is excellent. The home page could have the latest blog entries (perhaps with selected bloggers, or a screening process so the blogs posted are vetted). It could be tied to the news letter, since that is already being produced. Here's an example of the JREF Homepage. The forum is a key part of the foundation, but so are the blog articles and other activities. And here's another example, The CosmoQuest-X home page. Again, the forum is a big part of the site.
If this site's aim is to make the newsletter more important, then a portal would be nice to have. I don't think it is a must have though. Ha, finally caught you making a mistake! Now, sit down an explain to me, what is a challange? (Look at your gimp image)
Yeah, a portal, with news in descending order. If you look at www.minecraftforums.net, it gives you an idea of what I mean.
Ah... the student becomes the master! For some reason, spellcheck doesn't work in the text edit of GIMP, even in the newest version.
Nah, you still toss around words that I've never heard of on a daily basis. I can combat adverbs quite well, but aside from that, I still have much to learn, Master Now I wish I had something useful to say about this idea, but I don't. I don't think it is necessary, but I am not against it either.
@JJ_Maxx I am delighted to hear that, good Sir! Bye the bye, your online ribbon doesn't show. Are you constantly logging in and out or is it some weird bug?
I'm not sure. It probably has to with one of these things: 1. I am logged onto wf.org on my PC at home, my iPhone in my pocket and my work PC simultaneously. 2. I am currently on my work PC, which is running IE 8. 3. I am currently using the default theme, because IE 8 doesn't do the standard theme at all. So yeah, probably one of those reasons.
Here is another example of a portal: http://www.xda-developers.com - This forum/site is about all different kinds of mobile devices. However, I'm not really in favour of this idea. Sure we could use a portal, and it would be good, but I would strangely enough find it a loss if writingforums.org didn't lead directly over to forums.
@JJ_Maxx Your online status probably doesn't show because in the drop-down under your name you might have "Show Online Status Deselected"
As for the portal, I can only see us making that the homepage in two situations: 1) if the other sections of the site became equivalently as active as the forums (an article a day, a dozen resources a day, etc.), or if we eventually bought a domain name like writing.com or creativewriting.com and re-invented the site. That said, it's possible I could add a portal so you could quickly see everything, just have it on a separate page rather than the home page.
I agree with this, that we should keep the forum as "just a forum", and add a possible homepage/portal on another domain. Though I think some more thinking is in order before such a step is taken, so preparations are made to make it work. (As have been said before if a portal was to work it would have to be updated regularly)
What would happen is either the forum would migrate to an entirely new name or a new website/brand would be developed with writingforums.org acting as a second site/forum integrated with the first. Honestly though, something like this happening is not really in the cards right now. We're talking years in the future, and though I love to plan out growth, I don't see any good on speculating on something like this when so much can change and when the means just aren't their in the foreseeable future.
