The Portal, Announcements, and the Newsletter

Now again, this idea involves the Portal and the Newsletter. Except this idea lets the portal look amazing while having new updates and everything on the front page!

((When I write 'you', I mean whoever is doing it. In this case, it would be Shadow, but if you want to use something like this on your site, it would be you xD))

Here's what I'm proposing.
That we eliminate the current newsletter from the portal, and that we go to a 3 column layout which allows everything to be made and positioned nicely. One box on it will be the "announcements" box. We can link this to the "Announcements" section, and it will display any new threads there! Isn't that awesome?
Also, any of the newsletter articles will be in their own little boxes, so they will look nice and they can be seen easily. It won't take that much effort, and I'll explain how to do everything
If you look at this website..
http://travellingsisterhood.aforumfree.com/
You'll see that the portal is in multiple blocks. Some contain announcements (they're in a certain forum, which I'll talk about later), others contain parts of the newsletter (it's just a sample website I use for TWG ideas That's why some things are from the newsletter) and it all goes perfectly with the site!

What you've got to do is go to ACP >> Modules >> Portal Management and click on Structure on your main page. You'll be on a page which allows you to change the page name, and everything like that.
Now delete everything. Even the header You will now have a completely blank page to work with. Pull in some stuff, for the announcements pull in the "News" tab, and put it where you want in your layout (how about the top left?)

If you click the edit button (it looks like a yellow wheel xD) you can change the forum of which the threads will show in to the announcements forum. You can also choose how many of these threads (the newest ones, of course) will show. I think that three or four would be a good number, but that's up to you. Maybe to go with it you could allow users to post on the announcements, but not post them, as it shows 'comments.'

Now for the newsletter, what would happen is Pugs and/or me (the editor and layout editor of the newsletter) would PM Shadow the articles in HTML. Then, on the portal page, you go to "Create a custom block." When you're there, all you have to do is give it a name and a title (the names should be Newsletter1, Newsletter2 and so on ), and paste in the what's been sent to you, for example an interview, a poem, or a music report. You then go back and click on "Custom Widgets", look for the names, and pull these in wherever you want

Also, to make sure everything fits nicely, it would be good to set the percentages of the columns to 50%, 0%, and 50% again. This way everything has a lot of space, just make sure not to put anything in the middle column as that won't be seen.

This layout is useful for many reasons..
Firstly, it's a very easy to edit layout, and Shadow can change it whenever she wants to.
Secondly, it allows us to see the announcements and whatever else is in there. New threads, posts, even most active users!
And last but not least, it's a nice layout which goes well with the site.

So, what do you think? Would you like this implemented on the front page? The website seems to have some trouble working with the HTML layout, and I can 100% guarantee that this would work

I like the idea.

Thanks, Pugs
Did you like the example?

I like it! I'll work on updating the portal and stuff, then.

That is so cool! I really like this idea!

Thanks, Shadow and Merry
That's great!
((P.S. I love your siggie, Merry!))

Your welcome!

Thanks but Pugs made it. She is great at doing the cool signatures.

Yep, she is I love that fact xD
I think the portal looks awesome, doesn't it?

Yep. It looks great!

It sure does. I wonder if anyone else has posted on the newsletter thread. We're supposed to have a new one done by the first