Being one of the "old members" here, I can tell you that Furtopia did have a "front door" Welcome screen or page so to speak from long, long ago. Back between 2002 to early 2008, Furtopia was using the Invision I think?.......forum software, etc. We had a "front page" that visitors would see that showed and explained lots of stuff like links to IRC, Artist sites, the forums, and so much more. But that front "Welcome screen" and the Invision forums went away when Furtopia got hacked in early 2008. WhiteShepherd then moved Furtopia to using the SMF style forums.
The "Welcome page" never came back as there were too many dead links and services. That, plus the fact that WS closed down the web hosting. A lot of the dead links and services if I remember on the Welcome page went to hosted sites for Furtopian members.
SMF seems pretty stable and user friendly from all the time I've been here. As the old saying goes, If it ain't broke, then why fix it?
As for Furtopia creating it's own web page/platform, that might be up to WhiteShepherd and/or the staff. I can only take a guess that money and program coding might be two issues.