Well these days many forums have portals. I myself have never have liked portals, I always find myself just skipping the portal and always going straight to the forum. I find portals very annoying, and see it as a distraction stopping you from going to the forum. Im sure the forum owners have their reasons for using them, but I have never preferred it. To me it defeats the purpose of a forum.. why not just have the forum by itself.. whats the point of it, most never use the portals anyway and im sure they just skip straight to the forum like me, and also see it as a distraction. Do you like Portals?
I like the look of Portals, but there functionality can get a bit bland. I also seem to skip past them when going on a forum. I love sidebar's and such on forum's though, those are infact useful imo.
Good point, sidebars really are useful and not annoying like Portals, and I find most portals cramped with alot of unnecessary things.
I only find a portal useful if you're site is for like an online game or something and you want people reading the announcements by staff, so when they visit the site it's right there in front of them. Otherwise I'm not a fan of them.
I'm not a keen lover of portals, but as long as the portals have decent content within them, then I don't mind them that much.
