I am curious to know that if you have forums on the same domain does it hurt page rank? My website forums is xxxxx.com/forums I'm wondering that since I didn't set it up as a sub domain it is hurting me. My main page has more content that any PR2-PR3 site I've seen. It has Many unique articles and many more pages index'd yet it is only a Pr1. Could links in the forum or having links going from the homepage to forum be bringing down my ranking?
Personally drop the stuff down the right hand side of your forum with outbound, or content as you call it.
I've seen sites which have a very nice keyword rank BECAUSE of their forums. google indexes everything, it's unique content .. a forum is great for SEO imho
If the site is the forum one on your tag it has a lot of outbound that cannot be helping the PR. The less outbound or internal linking from the index will stop the G juice cascading to other pages.