Critique my forum skin

[Yours Truly]

There will be other forums as well as the ones on there if i put them all down would take more effort and this is only a preview of what i would want not an exact replica

How are the forums beneath the main 8 forums? Could the look of them be improved at all?

Now off to do my SHOWTHREAD, Index, Blog/Buildup and Thread list examples

[Joe Ward]

I really like the layout, although I'm not quite sold on the pastel colors yet. Perhaps it's just personal bias.

You might want to have a secondary forum display page that displays them in a more traditional manner for long-time members that want to be able to scan the forums more efficiency. However, I think what you have is great for recruiting new members.

[Juan Muriente]

I like it, a lot.

With thousands of competing forums out there, you are doing the right thing by finding ways to better appeal to your prospects. I agree in the fact that you should provide the option for older/advanced users to browse the forums in a traditional way (perhaps something like sitepoint has?).

With regards to the pastel colors, those are fine as far as you then use stronger brighter colors throughout the site in things that call to action, like buttons, certain links, a welcome header graphic that stands out, etc.

I love custom skins. I hate upgrading boards with custom skins.

[Yours Truly]

Amen to the upgrading part

I'm hoping to chuck it on when 3.7 goes live and hopefully can leave it till 4.0 (Which should be, what, 4-5 years? )

But thanks for the comments and suggestions guys ill try and get another example up with the suggestions provided

[PromotePoker]

I like it, nice use of pictures

The only thing I would probably change is cleaning up some of the user cp links at the top

I would get rid of the entire top line: Edit Avatar, Edit signature, Email, etc. Just have one link for "User Options", I don't think those are items that will be changed a lot, you can also make the avatar a hyperlink to the "edit Avatar"

I also would try to condense the welcome message so that all of the text fits on one line, instead of wrapping to the second line.

I did something very similar but different on my poker strategy forums site, and really like the way it turned out.

Overall, very nice custom skin.

Jason

[Yours Truly]

Thank you for the comments Jason

Let's see what i can do with these Suggestions

Dan

[Yours Truly]

Updated and pretty much a finished example i would say beta 1

[Joe Ward]

It looks great. However, the banner kind of interrupts your design.

Also - the text looks good aesthetically; however, I'm concerned that it is not very readable.

I think it's possible for you to both darken the text and increase it's size (to aid readability/user friendliness) and still maintain the great looking aesthetics of the style you have built.

Remember, we went through a long period of stylish design followed by Web 2.0 trend that started to focus more on usability, and brought about a transformation in sites that began to use large text, etc.

One example I can think of off-hand that employs larger, more readable text, and still looks good is:
TLA - Smart Link Marketing

[Koronful]

thax alot

[Yours Truly]

Thanks Joe

I would really like a banner spot as we put up banners for free for companies who are of use to our visitors and couldn't think of a more suitable place without having to move stuff. Any ideas?

Part of the text size was to get it as it is layout wise if i used size 12 instead of 10 then it would have put some of the forum descriptions onto 3 lines where i was aiming for 2 ideally to keep the layout quite compacted to save a bit of scrolling on the 1st page. But i'll see if i can work my way round it somehow

[Joe Ward]

What if you try a full row of banners, either (4x) or (2x) under your first row of forums (with pictures). The height would be about the same as the banner you have at the top and the width could match the width of the forum boxes (1x, 2x, etc).

Is this a fixed width template?

I really like the template, but I do think that the low contrast text makes it difficult for anything to stand out on the page, information wise, except (of course) for the photos.

[Yours Truly]

Yes it will be fixed width

I gotta find something to put where the current banner is now then

Ill see if i can darken the text and keep it looking how i like it

[HypedGaming]

Very nice. I like the layout.. very appealing and easy to use for visitors. I personally like the colors.. easy on the eyes and work safe. The only thing I don't like are the forums below the main car forums (with the pictures) they look cluttered. You should add some padding so they aren't squished together like that and maybe change the color of the text of the last post title and username

[Susan]

It looks great, nothing to Critique in my opinion.

[Yours Truly]

This is for sale now as Uncoded