Homepage or No Homepage?

Im looking for some advice on starting a new vBulletin forum site. As of now I expect to have the forum as the center of attention for the site, but I may have a compilation of articles written by members, and perhaps a very small amount of other dynamic content. I can either stuff all that onto a forum page, or keep the other content on a homepage. Obviously the goal is to get exposure to both the content and the forum. How realistic is it for folks to go to the homepage if the main draw is the forum? On the other hand, I'd much prefer an uncluttered forum board. What are the pros and cons of having a homepage w/ content vs. stuffing it onto the forum board page?

One consideration that makes me lean toward a homepage - I'm new to the forum world and I'm thinking if I keep the forum board pretty "standard" I can focus my programming efforts on the homepage instead of having a forum board so complex that I have to outsource anything I do to it.

Thoughts?

I appreciate the input!

Tom

I really like the way this forum is set up. Your articles could be posted as stickeys at the top of the forum. That may not be feasible based on how many articles you have.

It depends really. If the point of your site is that it is a forum (like here) then just direct users to the forum. But if you have a site, with some articles say, that just happens to have a very successful forum then I'd have a home page, even if it was a really simple gateway that allowed users to either go to the forum or the articles page.

Like BGarner said though you could always post articles on your forum. In an articles section perhaps, then it would be easy to discuss them or leave comments as well.

What the subject of the site, and more importantly what are your aims? Figure out what you want the site to achieve then things might be a bit clearer. An objective is always good when your setting up something new it gives you something to judge your site against other than working and being pretty (not that there's anything wrong with that ).

Pete.

You can use a CMS like Joomla to build your forum so it's like a portal. Just a suggestion.