I swear I've read through every related comment and thread on making the Categories page the forum homepage and NOTHING is working! Why is this so hard? Some mentioned there being an option in admin settings to easily choose your own homepage...I have the latest version of Vanilla and I don't see anything like that.

I've tried the .htaccess route as detailed on this page:
http://lussumo.com/community/discussion/5713/page-mng-addon-how-to-make-tab-to-be-the-default-homepage-for-my-site/#Comment_61388

That left my Discussions tab dead - couldn't access Discussions anymore.

I've tried installing CategoryPageFirst and Discussion Heading, similar results. CategoryPageFirst made the Discussions tab dead, and while I like Discussion Heading I think it's confusing to have all the categories listed on the Discussion page and then again on the Categories page.

And I've read through each and every one of these related links:

http://lussumo.com/community/discussion/1658/have-the-categories-displayed-first-as-default/

http://lussumo.com/community/discussion/3100/setting-categories-as-the-default-page-for-vanilla/

http://lussumo.com/community/discussion/1334/set-categories-as-homepage-starting-point-frontpage-/

http://lussumo.com/community/discussion/2511/2-things-select-all-and-categories-as-home/

http://lussumo.com/community/discussion/655/howto-set-categories-tab-as-homepage/

http://lussumo.com/community/discussion/1896/user-list-and-default-to-categories/

http://lussumo.com/community/discussion/1236/select-discussions-categories-as-default-view/

http://lussumo.com/community/discussion/707/startup-to-categories/

I've spent hours trying to figure this out today...am I completely missing the catch-all solution? There have been so many queries about this, surely it's been figured out by now! If you have the answer, do tell.

You rule. I hadn't seen that mentioned in any of the threads and I didn't see it when I searched for relevant add-ons. I've just installed it and it seems to be doing the trick. THANK YOU.

Add-on link: http://lussumo.com/addons/index.php?PostBackAction=AddOn&AddOnID=319