Looking to Improve my Forum

[Joshua Farrell]

Oops, posted this in the wrong forum, so I deleted my original post, and am posting it in the correct board. Silly me.

I am looking to improve my forum design and such a little bit, and hopefully get ideas on how best to put stuff together on it.

Some stipulations before looking at my forum to consider that I do not want suggested, and will report if posted.

No Posting of the following:

• Getting off of a free forum host.
  Sorry, Free forum hosts are fine enough for what I need at the moment. So no suggesting.
• Adfree - The ads are fine. I have no reason to get rid of them for now.
• More Topics - I havent officially opened the place, so I don't need tons of topics yet. 😛
• Getting a Domain - Sorry, not in the budget at the moment.
• Posting 1 sentence advice - If you can't post what will really help me out, then don't post ok?

Any actual constructive advice is accepted. If you just post a one liner, and not add anything to help out, then get out and don't post.

Need I say more?

http://directadvertisement.proboards.com/index.cgi

 

[el canadiano]

- Blue is a good idea on the left, but not that texture. That's for real life stuff. Maybe consider getting something like what FP has on the left (diagonal two-colour lines).
- http://a.random-image.net/dentist/sponsor.jpg - That image spelled sponsor wrong. Consider changing that.
- The white on the inside is sharp. Perhaps another background might do it.
- If you have access to your theme's CSS and find an img attribute, then add border: 0 inside the line. If not, add this.

img
{
border: 0;
}

That makes all image borders disappear.

- Honestly, do get off Proboards. If your budget has to end up being $0, then you can still get decent free hosting. There are a lot of decent enough free hosts that will run faster than Proboards. On top of that, it wrongfully gives SMF a bad name (the reason for its similarities is because Proboards is based off YaBB while SMF is a complete rewrite of YaBB SE, the PHP/MySQL version of YaBB).

 

[Joshua Farrell]

- Blue is a good idea on the left, but not that texture. That's for real life stuff. Maybe consider getting something like what FP has on the left (diagonal two-colour lines).

Alright, I probably will get a new sidebar background made soon. I didn't think that it was ugly enough to warrant not using it.

Ok, changed it, along with the Background. Need a new opinion.

- http://a.random-image.net/dentist/sponsor.jpg - That image spelled sponsor wrong. Consider changing that.

My bad, I wasn't thinking about the spelling before I uploaded it. Will be updated as soon as I fix the error.
And it is fixed. 🙂

- The white on the inside is sharp. Perhaps another background might do it.

Maybe I should do with a light grey background? Suggestions maybe on the color?

See the sidebar reply above.

- If you have access to your theme's CSS and find an img attribute, then add border: 0 inside the line. If not, add this.

img
{
border: 0;
}

That makes all image borders disappear.

I do have access to it, and I believe I fixed the problem. 🙂

 

[ChrisM]

Sorry, but wasnt DirectAdvertisement an advertising site that closed down? (DirectAdvertisment.org)?

Anyways, if you want to get off the free forum host, then get yourself a domain and i will give you a free unlimited shared hosting plan 😛

 

[Joshua Farrell]

Yeah, There was a direct advertisement.org, but I didn't own it, and the kid no longer wants to do it. Can't blame him really. He wasnt really that ready to administrate that forum. It was popular for the while he had it up.

You know, you both are doing exactly what I suggested not to do. 😛 From now on, any other replies about being on a forum host I will report, k?

 

[Joshua Farrell]

Looking for possible improvements to my forum that might help draw in members to it. 🙂

 

[John1]

First visiting the homepage I can say it's very unorganised. Some of the images and ads are not aligned correctly and look to be just floating around the page.

The color scheme in my opinion isn't very good and there is no logo what-so-ever. You could try adding a logo, changing themes and letting members have direct access to the forum.

 

[Joshua Farrell]

Actually it is organized correctly, just plenty of deviations. 😛 The images are actually aligned correctly, the ones in the footer are the ones that act slightly funky on the home page. 😛

Members have direct access to the forum, all they have to do is click the category they want in the side table. 😛

If you want to suggest a better color scheme, you have to actually give me ideas, because I cannot change it if I don't have ideas on what might look good.