I just started this forum and I would appreciate any suggestions, new idea's or constructive criticism that you guys could provide (just click on the button at the bottom of this post). Thank you!
The forum looks quiet good with an eye soothing design and good color schemes. I can suggest you a category if you like - Authors. This category can list various renowned authors and members can discuss their various likes and dislikes.
The two themes you have look good on the forum and I think suits the niche well. You should really take the extra few minutes to add all of the matching graphics to the themes though. It will complete the look for them because right now the default graphics stand out like a sore thumb, especially on the dark theme =p
For a new board I think your layout is kind of bloated and unnecessary. As the forum grows maybe you could expand the forum but right now it seems like there's too many sections to try to fill up. One small suggestion I have is to (for now) make the TV and Movies forum into a subforum within the Library, and remove the current subforums that the TV/Movie forum has. You could maybe combine a few subforums in the Library too; maybe horror/thriller and crime/mystery? Just to reduce the bulk. So the category would look something like:
Category
Forum
-> Subforum
Books
General
-> Authors
Library
-> Biography/Autobiography,
-> Crime/ Mystery
-> Fantasy
-> Historical
-> Horror/Thriller
-> Humour
-> Romance
-> Science Fiction
-> TV/Movies
-> Other
Anime/Manga
-> Anime
-> Manga
-> Graphic Novels
-> Comics
Characters
Writers Lounge (again the subforums seem unnecessary)
I think that would be neater for you and less overwhelming 🙂
You could probably do away with some subforums in the general area as well. Like the separate News subforums, I think it'd work fine if they were all together for now. Same with the Media subforums. One or two might work well but I don't think 5 are needed so early on. For example my forum has been open for over a year and has over 100k posts - we still only have the main "entertainment" forum for movies, tv shows, music, etc and one subforum for gaming, and it works just fine 🙂
One final thing, you have some links in your affiliate marquee's that are coming up as errors because they're not proper links/images. I'm not sure why you have 2 marquees since the one seems like a mixture of topsites/affiliates anyway - but it looks messy and very bulky. Perhaps try to find a more efficient code, or just a better way to organize it.
Hope that helps in some way, but it's all just my take on what I'm seeing 🙂 Good luck with the forum!
The two themes you have look good on the forum and I think suits the niche well. You should really take the extra few minutes to add all of the matching graphics to the themes though. It will complete the look for them because right now the default graphics stand out like a sore thumb, especially on the dark theme =p
For a new board I think your layout is kind of bloated and unnecessary. As the forum grows maybe you could expand the forum but right now it seems like there's too many sections to try to fill up. One small suggestion I have is to (for now) make the TV and Movies forum into a subforum within the Library, and remove the current subforums that the TV/Movie forum has. You could maybe combine a few subforums in the Library too; maybe horror/thriller and crime/mystery? Just to reduce the bulk. So the category would look something like:
Category
Forum
-> Subforum
Books
General
-> Authors
Library
-> Biography/Autobiography,
-> Crime/ Mystery
-> Fantasy
-> Historical
-> Horror/Thriller
-> Humour
-> Romance
-> Science Fiction
-> TV/Movies
-> Other
Anime/Manga
-> Anime
-> Manga
-> Graphic Novels
-> Comics
Characters
Writers Lounge (again the subforums seem unnecessary)
I think that would be neater for you and less overwhelming 🙂
You could probably do away with some subforums in the general area as well. Like the separate News subforums, I think it'd work fine if they were all together for now. Same with the Media subforums. One or two might work well but I don't think 5 are needed so early on. For example my forum has been open for over a year and has over 100k posts - we still only have the main "entertainment" forum for movies, tv shows, music, etc and one subforum for gaming, and it works just fine 🙂
One final thing, you have some links in your affiliate marquee's that are coming up as errors because they're not proper links/images. I'm not sure why you have 2 marquees since the one seems like a mixture of topsites/affiliates anyway - but it looks messy and very bulky. Perhaps try to find a more efficient code, or just a better way to organize it.
Hope that helps in some way, but it's all just my take on what I'm seeing 🙂 Good luck with the forum!
