hi blury,
good to see ya.
hey nubcnubdo, nice to see you too

Sadly i am working this month and i dont have enough time to sit and do the site mockups. I stand for forum integration in my mockup, since the forum is the most active part of this comunity, you should focus on a viewing module type of main page to show whats latest around. I dont like the idea of having just one man updating all the information around on the website,while the real announcements go on at the forum,which is kind of hard to find from the menu.
I understand your fear of penetration of the forum,but i also believe that no script kiddy would attack the forum and succeed this time.
The forum is the heart of this comunty, you should focus on it mostly,but you MUST have a good presentation of the distro and outdated information,invalid links,old screenshots,uncomfortable navigation and a-not-so-well-made-color-scheme-and-overal-design is not a good presentation at all. I actually think you are loosing alot from this lack of manpower to make the website look good and function well, and after that work without any need of additional work at it ..