I don't get that. When someone opens the site via a browser then there is the "default page" showing. I don't know how different this is from "front page". Even if they have set up a splash page that leads to the Drupal site, this should not change the fact that from within the Drupal admin the frontpage is still that page which Drupal must show or start from.
default page start page home page opening page first page index page
Or am I missing part of the scenario? Is this a naming conflict that needs to be resolved?
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. Goba