I've always been a little torn between showing old content on the homepage. I've heard so much about fresh content that it's downright scary to show ANY old content no matter how great it is. Then a funny thing happened....in speaking in person with a member of my network while out in the community, he said "we've pretty much covered everything." But, I thought, can I show a year old discussion front and center on the homepage?? Yes, I can. I can also remove the date stamp for the last reply for the forum too.

Go to language editor, and search for "last reply". For me, there were only 3 search returns. Looking at the last one, you will see something like this:

Started this discussion. <a %1$s>Last reply</a> by %2$s %3$s.

You see where it says by %2$s %3$s ....well, delete the %3$s and you will have removed the date stamp from your forum. I am still looking to see where else this may effect; I am primarily focused on the homepage for this tip.

You can visit http://onecompton.com to see the results. I have 20 discussions showing front and center and they show the last reply but not the date. My reasoning for doing this is:

1) my network is geared towards the entire city and sometimes there discussions that warrant more input from members. Also, some issues (like potholes or crime in a certain area, etc) need to be seen so they can be discussed further. I've learned with NING that my homepage gets 10 times as many visits as my forum. I've heard members say how they can't follow the site properly; No one really wants to scroll umpteen pages to see what's going on anymore.

2)A few weeks ago, I featured some old discussions and showed them on the homepage. They all garnered new responses. Refer to reason 1) for why I think this is.

Ok. That's the tip.

Let me know what you think of it. Hopefully it's something someone can use. Even if just to ease the mind a little of the "fresh content" thingy ya know.