I don't see having the shout box on the main page. What the current setup looks like on the front page is out of order IMO. On the main page I would expect to have one side (left) be information useful for members of the site (us), the center section contains current news and highlights the guild and the right section should have information that interested visitors would find useful (such as what are we recruiting, what is our progression, what guild level we are); to me this layout has nice flow. That being said, I would not put the shout box smack dab in the middle of the right column.
What I think would work best is to get rid of the latest threads container and put the shout box in its place. You can still see the latest threads by going to the forums and clicking on "View New Posts', you can even set your reviction book mark to that page.
Right now the position of the shoutbox on the main page looks like shit. And having it on its own page is counter of what it was meant to be used for. Either put it someplace useful or get rid of it.
Edit - Also, as I look at the forum page we could also drop the Top Posters container for the shout box as well.
On a long enough time-line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
What about getting rid of the log in / register box on the left? I like knowing who's browsing the forums, but do we really need to know that ourself is logged in. I think that's accomplished with the section across the top bar. I also am ok with eliminating the latest posts box. The latest thread box is useful, but again can be accomplished in another way. Dropping the top posters box is also a good idea.
I added the shoutbox back to the forum page. The forums see the most amount of traffic on the website which means the shoutbox itself should see some good use. The main reason why I added the shoutbox to begin with was because of people surfing the forums while on break from raid or waiting for the servers to come up (there was a specfic request for this during raid from folks), if they don't have their headset on or something at least we have another way of catching their attention; having the shout box on the forum page means it will be seen real time.
I also moved the shout box on the main page. IMO, since people don't hang out on the main page we can actually remove the shout box from the main page. Let me know what you guys think.
On a long enough time-line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
