Forum index as main page vs. page outside of forum

[t-rent]

I could not come up with a good title for my question.

I'm a noob when it comes to all this SEO and redirection stuff so beat with me.

My forum has been around since 2003. It has always had a main page outside of the forum; that is what the top level domain points to. My forum is in the folder /forum

Dubs.inthe.Buff
Dubs in the Buff

Now my main page doesn't really serve any purpose so I was thinking of doing away with it and just redirecting straight to the forum.

Will this kill or hurt any of my results in SE's or anything like that? I have lots of pages indexed in Google.

Also what is the best way to redirect without affecting anything?

Would it be more worthwhile to set up portal page like vbseo as my main page? This would be helpful for ranking for certain keywords I would imagine.

Thanks for any help!!

[Joe Ward]

If you have a portal page, you just have to make sure that you keep some good content and links in there, as opposed to stuff like "maintenance notices" that I see on many forums.

This post has some notes on the topic, in additional to a bunch of other stuff:
Your Site Review - Stuff to Do First