If you're looking to hide the chatbox from guests entirely and easily, you can just use slide this right into your wrappers (directly above </body>):
Code:
<script>
if ("<!-- |g_id| -->" == "2") {
document.getElementById('shoutbox').style.display = "none";
}
</script>
Beyond that though you probably should work on developing a custom skin (or finding someone who could make a skin for you). The default is a good skin to be sure, but having your own unique skin makes your site a lot more memorable.
(If you try making a skin yourself, keep the basic design principles in mind when skinning... font size at least 10, avoid tiny fonts like georgia, don't use font colours that are close to background colours, avoid neon colours, stick to 1-2 main colours and 1-2 shades of those colours. So if you use a grey like #171717 then feel free to use #141414 and #1A1A1A too since they're shades close to that grey.)
TLD's can be nice to have if you want to spend the money for one... but don't feel as though you have to. It's a good idea to only spend the money once things get going a bit.
I agree that you may want to compact things down a bit... like you have a section for comic books and graphic novels. But you have no posts in graphic novels. You could easily merge both forums into one and call it "Comics and Graphic Novels".
And you could do this for several sections. Like:
- merge your 2 music forums into one (possibly doing away with the category for now. )
- TV shows and movies could be merged into one forum also.
- Anime and Manga forums could be merged.
- Fanfiction, stories and poetry could be merged with Artwork to create a forum called "User created works". (I'd also have this one made members only just to prevent guests from borrowing anything. You can do that by looking for "Permission Masks" under "Forum Control" in your ACP and then editing the guest permission mask.)
You could take those merged forums that I mentioned above and stick them into one category to create one media discussion section. (This would make your forum look a lot more compact while still offering room for plenty of discussion. And later on if you started to get a lot of discussion for one section you could start to specialize a bit then by introducing sub-forums for those topics.)
Also, it might be worth considering changing the pets forum into a general/miscellaneous forum for any sort of topic not covered by other sections for now. (Unless you really want to have a section for talking about pets and pet ownership and fill it full of topics about that.)
Though I think the largest thing your forum needs right now is... more content. Just keep posting and making more topics.
One note I mention to all forum owners... keep your expectations realistic. Forums take time and energy to build and grow. Consider yourself luck to get 20 members in the first 3 months. (Many places don't get that.) And above all, just keep at it. Don't give up.
