I want to run my forum like a blog

[Codetopus]

I want a forum where the posts from a selected group (The general discussion board) appear on the index page like blog posts (headlines), and users get to open and view, reply, vote in polls etc, and links to other forum categories are placed somewhere on the homepage where users can easily go their preferred boards/categories anytime. Thanks in anticipation!!!

[Gary]

Don't use 2.1 on a live site, it's still in development. Use 2.0 instead.

For using SMF features on a standard website, check out your copy of ssi_examples.php (or http://simplemachines.org/community/ssi_examples.php) it'll show you lots of functions that you can use outside of SMF with SSI.php. 2.0 has the capability.

I've been making use of features like this for eight years.

[Codetopus]

To be frank with you. I'm a pro in HTML & CSS, I'm just planning on learning PHP, so I don't really understand the lots. I just need something like a working template. Thanks

[Kindred]

You can pretty much do this with a portal mod...

[Ken.]

You can pretty much do this with a portal mod...

That sounds like what you need to achieve your desired result.

There several portals available that could do the job for you. My preference is TinyPortal and we've released version 1.1 that works great, give it a look.
http://www.tinyportal.net/index.php