sounds good. if people cba to access the forums from the homepage then a new domain or setting the portal/homepage as a different name, such as
www.computerforums.org/portal.php could work
but then it stops being a front page and starts being a web page behind a forum.
a single web page behind a forum isn't great.
an entire website, filled with news/reviews/tutorials would be absolutely awesome,
and probably bring quite a lot more traffic here.
on the other hand, whilst the forum receives a lot of traffic there isn't really a way to generate new at a fast enough rate.
and if you want to rely on user content, then you'll likely have to enable comments, and basically make the site another forum.
and if you don't open comments for people to post corrections then you have to consider how many requests to change information there could be.
honestly I think this is a great idea.
a strong website that was a useful resource behind this forum would be a good asset to the site.
but a stale or stagnant site with poor quality content, it's not really worth the effort.
and I agree that I like coming straight to the forums rather than a homepage then having to click through.
but if the homepage was a part of a really good site, then I'd change my mind and probably think it was better to have a landing page rather than coming straight to the forum screen.