Is your forum the homepage of your website?

Prosperous

What are your thoughts on making your own forum your site's main page?

There have been numerous communities where I have seen all methods used whether it be the forum as a homepage, the use of a portal and of course opting for the more common homepage/site + forum option. Then there are others who go for the CMS + forum suite. I have usually stuck with the CMS + forum arrangement purely due to the fact that I don't know a whole lot about coding but it would be interesting to gather the community's opinions.

What do you currently use and why?

jordanjay29

Prosperous for some reason I thought you were asking about the browser home page. Instead you seem to be asking of Flarum is the website main page.

Satyajit

Yes, https://wehindi.com

Prosperous

jordanjay29 Exactly. So when someone decides to use Flarum for their own community, do they use it as their homepage or do they have a CMS/website or some sort. I'll see if I can clear up the first post. ?

clarkwinkelmann

Flarum is used as the discussion platform for one of my games, so the homepage is obviously the game itself (Laravel app) ?

JasonLABS

clarkwinkelmann What is your site? I like games ?

EnDylan

That is what I wanted to do if I haven't designed my website infrastructure. Its a pain in the neck if I would want to use it as homepage. Having it at the homepage is much better as it is much more accessible.

clarkwinkelmann

I think the main question is whether the community is at the center of your project.

If your business is about discussions, you probably only need a few static pages (and you could even use an extension for this) and if the discussions are public, having them on homepage is a great showcase!

If Flarum is used as a meta platform for your business, it should probably not be the default page, your main content should (game, blog, e-commerce, etc)

JasonLABS

Right now, it is the discussion section, though I've thought about having the forum be the main page of one of them. I haven't been able to wrap my mind around the idea of someone just landing on a discussion board without any context.

clarkwinkelmann

JasonLABS you can use the default welcome banner or use a more elaborate welcome extension to give your new visitors explanation.

I've already posted about it a few time, my game is in closed alpha and only in French at the moment, see https://zetamode.com

meetdilip

In my niche, Flarum is not yet ready to be a home page. Mainly because I need to show case interesting content than just serving as a discussion platform

I am currenly with http://appen.pw , a webmaster forum.

AngelAvila

In my case I have a Bootstrap homepage besides Flarum

Homepage: https://walkingplayers.com
Flarum: https://walkingplayers.com/foro

boxofficebuz

Currently, I have it as a subdirectory. My goal is to set up Flarum how IMDB use to have their forums. So when you are on a database page, you will be able to click through to say "Batman v Superman discussion" and it will point to the Batman v Superman tag.

Homepage: https://boxofficebuz.com
Flarum (tag example): https://forum.boxofficebuz.com/t/30313-atomic-blonde

Thanks to the API I was able to start dynamically creating tag slugs that match the SEO friendly URL of the matching movie.

Prosperous

This is some good feedback. I'm undecided right now as to how I will structure my site but am leaning towards the traditional way as mentioned before. I guess if your focus is the community then it should really be your main page. So it seems it really depends on the subject matter I suppose.

SarbjitGrewal

Yeah, this is the best option of blending the homepage with the forums, as it will help to get the support from the community as per the problem that we generally face during the designing and development of any CMS, software or website.