Can vBa portal do this?
 

Just wondering if vBadvanced portal is able to create friendly URLs e.g. forum.com/design or
forum.com/design/education. Also is it posible to change the look of each portal category?

Or would I be better off creating a HTML website and just use RSS to show polls, articles(using a hack), and featured posts on my HTML category index pages? Would this be a straightforward task? I think I found software that can let me use the RSS from a particular forum and show it on the HTML main pages...would this be very intensive on a server?

Appreciated.

That would be somthing like using mod_rewrite, and its not part of vBa by default.

By default vb3 provides rss, xml and javascript syndication so you could just put the javascript in your html page. The friendly url's would be an apache thing using mod_rewrite as Zachary said.

Great, I think a HTML site would make more sense. I also looked up mod_rewrite and I think it can put a lot more strain on the server if you get a lot of visitors.

Also is it possible to show a poll and let people vote from a HTML page like on the vBadvanced homepage. This would be using RSS/XML etc. ?

Another reason i'm not keen on vBa is that I dont know if it will be easy to use a CSS pop-out menu navigation. Although I am currently trying to find vBa portals that look completeley different from the default which may make me reconsider.

For some examples of vBa CMPS ranging from simple to complicated try here: http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/s...8&postcount=10