Carl, you don't get it. You can set very easily set 'forum' to be your site frontpage, or you can just set 'node/12' (node/view/12 in 4.5) to be your frontpage. Then the promote flag has no effect on a node showing on your own frontpage, since it is not the default 'node' page.
Sorry... what does the promote flag do, then, if it doesn't affect whether something shows on the front page when the front page is not the default node page?
Anisa, it depends on the homepage you use, or where else you show the promoted nodes. Drupal is flexible, and you can use 'promote' for anything. Like promoting weblink nodes to a block (given that you have the block code written yourself, and the homepage written yourself, to ignore promoted weblinks itself). I thought about populating a weblink block this way at a site, but then went a different way.... This is still a usecase however. Goba