Hm..I like the first idea, it would be more like the PHP Nuke style websites I’ve seen..which whilst some may disagree with, personally I find very attractive and efficient to use. I like the idea of a lot of information all over the place, much like that site shown.
I’m not too bothered on either option. both are decent. I like the first one but it shouldn’t stray away from the forums too much, as this is the main part of the community. I would however like to see the forums have more of a direct and integrated look to the reviews. As finding reviews isn’t so clear to new visitors. Maybe as you said latest reviews bar and a HWFs colour/style review page look. Not looking like threads of course.
option 2 definitely, option one is cluttered and confusing, i like the durrent HWF design because it is simple, un-cluttered and straight to the point, i do think merging z365 and HWF together would be a good thing though.
I like option 1, as it’s a more complete information store right in your face (out of site out of mind, right?). Plus, it’d make us look more organized and established. I think a straight-up VB forum as our index kinda makes us appear like a fly-by-night, but maybe that’s just me.
Yes, I like the seamless look between the forums and that front-end. It’s very nice. That being said, it would be nice to see larger, bolder headlines. Otherwise it might look too seamless, making it hard to tell the difference between the forums and the articles. Also, I don’t know if it’d be too much work, but it’d be really cool to see topical icons for each news article (like Slashdot).
not sure about the larger headlines, but now attach image to the post and it should display on the main page. have a look at the page again http://www.hardwareforums.com/portal.php
