I was wondering if there's an easy way to put the form for starting a new discussion on the front page of the forums - kind of like the quick reply box at the bottom of forum topics, but I'd like to have the form at the top of the front page, with the recent discussions listed below it. I'd also need it to be able to play nice with add-ons like the file uploader. I did some searches on the forum and on google to see if something like this existed, but I couldn't find anything (although I'm very new to Vanilla) so I'm hoping that there's a way to accomplish this.
It sounds like a great idea. It's much more intuitive for non-frequent members. Look at a new community called www.askville.com for an example (no registration needed).
Maybe both the title and the small message text area or even just the title could be on the main page. People would be much more likely to start discussions then. If additional detailed inputs are necessary (e.g. category, tags etc), then the next screen could ask for those, filling in the already inserted data sent by $_POST.