Might want to add a big old welcome sticky post for visitors. You’ll see one named Welcome to DroneCode Discussions on the DroneCode landing page: http://discuss.dronecode.org
For the UI, I’d like to see categories listed on say a left area column/tower, that way we could jump between channels faster. There’s all this empty space on the right hand side so we could push the thread dialog over a little. And if the categories menu was global, we could swap back to the Latest tab to be the landing spot for the home page, this would make sure that the welcome sticky is clearly visible.
I think its also just simply more engaging when you land on forum and instantly see what the site is talking about, so thats why I like the Latest tab front and center rather that a boring unchanging list categories. Regulars members can just bookmark the site using the Categories tab if they really want to, but the landing page will always mostly be the first thing new visitors see.
edit: I see we do have a welcome sticky, its just not pinned on top.
relevant discourse topic: Full height, slide out hamburger menu