yes for heroes there is a thing where you can click tech tree usage or something like that then say long bow etc which allows the hero to obtain that upgrade
I am working on getting access to the old news portal under a different URL for those that would rather use that for news before we get a different news view.
It is OK though for the main page to open up on the forum in the view it was before. As long as the portal has its own URL so it can be viewed that way I do want to try it as a regular forum view for a while
I switched it to a "Standard" article forum. This will show the thread list like normal, but the threads themselves will have the first post set up above the rest of the "comments"