I decided to have a portal page--and will use a "news forum" to try to introduce information to my members via that page, but I have given everyone the ability to turn off the columns on the left & right if they go directly to the forums.
I don't like a lot of clutter on the actual forum pages.
I figure if people want to go directly to the forums, they can create a link for it; also, eventually, I'll create a link directly to active topics, because that's how I'm used to navigating around my board.
~Sue
adwoff.com