Do you guys have the best traffic results, as far as people staying and joining your forum, from having a portal as the homepage? I currently run a portal on my homepage of my vbulletin forum, but for some reason I am thinking it's too clustered? I am now considering a landing page, with just a picture/logo, for users that come to my domain name root to click through to the forums. I need suggestions on this topic, if you guys have any. Keep in mind that I am running a vbulletin forum with a lot of plugins, around 10. Do you guys think I should stick with a portal, or just a landing page? I have also looked into having my forums in the root of the domain name, so they will display right away. I just think the portal thing gets away from the community I am trying to build? Maybe I am just seeing things right now. Any and all experience with this kind of stuff would be appreciated. Thanks!
Don't use a landing page...I really do think that they do more harm than good....They're best at getting in the way of your visitors and your forums. If you're going to have a homepage or a portal, use it. Don't have one just for the heck of it. It needs to deliver some real value to your visitors. Ask yourself if you have a homepage - Does this page offer something to my visitors that they could not easily get by visiting my forums/forum index? If your answer to that question is no, then you should either get rid of the front page or make sure that it delivers something of value. In most situations, if your main focus is the forums, I honestly believe that you are better off putting the forums in the root.
I was thinking that also. I have decided not to do the landing page thing, because I would turn many people away, imo. I think I have a good homepage right now, that is very informative. I have ten of the latest posts displayed right at the top of the homepage, and users can click right through to the forums and reply. In the mean time I will work on optimizing the homepage/portal! Thanks for the response.