Critique Please

[guile09]

How can I improve my general discussion forum and increase activity? What are the best ways to build incoming links?

www.newsforum.com

[GSeybold]

Hello Guile
In general I think your forum looks great. Here's my opinion just from my tastes. Your left hand column as a lot of text and advertising, combine this with the text of your forum content and there a lot of text all over the place. Because your forum is a news forum I can see why you may need links to news but maybe full width your forum and add those links in a "news" drop down in the navi bar? Just my silly suggestion. I like clean, easy to view forums, not a lot of hoopla, text and advertisment. For me, the GOOGLE adwords is a huge turnoff. The bright red flashing Pizza Hut large vertical banner under the left navi bar is quite distracting, takes my eyes right our of your forum content and into the advertsing, If that's what you want than it's working. LOL Otherwise I think your forum looks great. I'll register:)

[puertoblack2003]

lol..that advert is googles ads...

[GSeybold]

No dah, and it's very distracting

[serypeta]

Spell check your introduction. Friendly is incorrectly spelt.

[Gladhatter]

5 of 10. A bit bland but has a modicum of potential.