How might someone add an option for how they are greeted by Vanilla?
I would love to be able to add a preference for the application, and possibly for individual users to choose to either see the discussions first (as is default) of the categories view upon load (as an option.)
Something I've noticed already about making the transition between a standard forum and Vanilla is that folks are somewhat disoriented. In seeking feedback, what users like about ubb, punbb, and phpbb is the spread sheet effect, how they can see "everything" at a glance and then make choices about what they want to read from there.
I really love Vanilla, and prefer it. But, in the interest of helping people to cope, and make the transition, it might be nice to spare them the initial shock, and greet them with the Categories until they felt ready for the change.
Wondering just how difficult this would be to accomplish?
You could do this in an extension. Just extend one of the account controls to allow them to choose and then, based on their decision and which file is being accessed how, load the page an exit, overriding the default index.php or categories.php.