I've noticed a lot of other forums have a Portal. Do you think Said Wicked Forums should have one? I like them sometimes I guess... But I'm afraid of it looking too cluttered or messy. What do you think?
Yeah i kind of agree. I don't know. I bet it would be nice if you had a ton of members. I've tried setting up a portal just to see how it would look and it's super messy. If I could figure out how to make the middle (body) part into an updates or announcements blog that would be nice. But I havent figured it out.
Nevertheless, I think I'm just going to go portal free.
Really it all depends on you and how you want your forum to look as mine i originally had a portal but just thought it looked like it shouldn't really be there so i chose against the idea and took it down.
You might want to have one, but never link your logo to it unless you actually have a full site, not just a forum. Only make one if you want information on it, such as what your site is about.
Maybe a blog on a subdomain like blog.example.com or a path like example.com/blog will be good for keeping members up to date if your forums has a lot of contests, updates, and news relating to your category.
For me, upon reading many people considers them a put off, I deactivated the ones I had at my boards, but oh surprise, seems like most of my active members actually wanted it to be around. 😛
So I put it back, now I am using a set of portals to explain my boards some more, heheh. :lol:
So my advise is to ask openly to your own people, and if they don't cooperatre wiuth an answer then go for what you think. 😉