Those are some stellar suggestions through and through, Vibe. I'm glad you're here!
There's definitely the possibility of adding a Wordpress-like blog to the site, and making that the landing page when people visit riptidelab.com. I like your idea of promoting good, homegrown content from right here on the forums as articles to the front page. We'd have to be careful not to just retread the areas that Jason's already covering on his series of articles, but this could be a way to give other people some spotlight, too. But I think your idea about presenting the best ideas in an easy-to-read form are on point.
As far as the banner goes, there's no technical limit on what we can put up there. I'd actually love to see a full fledged banner to give this site some kind of branding, and I've seen people deck out their cube lists on other forums with all kinds of fancy graphics. Jason and I just lack the talent for this sort of graphical trickery. Would you believe I made the current forum "banner" in about 30 seconds in MS Paint? ...Yeah. Anyways, if you have connections with folks who are artistically inclined, and would be willing to donate a sweet banner, Jason and I would be really appreciative. I agree - looks are important, as are the first impressions gleaned from them.
I like the idea of an official Twitter channel to spam.. er, promote our good content. I'm not much of a Twitter guy myself, but maybe Jason can run with this idea.
The only point I'll disagree with you on is the subforum one, and only for the moment. I've been involved with a number of communities over the years, and I've found there's nothing that kills a burgeoning discussion group like splintering threads all over the place, forcing people to remember to check multiple links. As long as the volume of threads is manageable, we'd prefer to keep all the people in one place for now, which makes it easier to check for what's new. We realize that at a certain point, this approach becomes untenable, and then and only then will we create subforums and manually reassign threads around. This is a model that I've seen work well at large, thriving communities - i.e., split into subforums only as needed - so it's something I'd like to emulate. But I appreciate the comment, and I hope you understand it's something we've thought about and will continue to keep in mind.
I really want to thank you for your post. You clearly have some background in this area, and all of your recommendations should hopefully spread the word about this place.
