Sentinel can target both trees and units if you adjust the targets allowed. While the spell effect itself does not work on units, the spell event still occurs.
I just tested Sentinel and tree's can't be targeted once they have a Sentinel. I can easily kill / recreate the tree, but it results in the awkward 'variation' change.
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"