Web Design and Web Development Forums

[Stormraven]

Hello people, just wondered if someone could give my website a review. My URL is Web Design Forums (http://www.codershangout.co.uk/).

Kind Regards
Stormraven.

[HMBeaty]

The Good:
Love the "Stimulation for the head and body", very creative. Nice style, nice and clean look.
I do plan on putting some boxes around the post count and location etc
Good idea. I would also suggest centering the username and usertitle so it flows with the avatar and rank

The Not So Good:
Too many images on the first of the register pages. Takes too long to load all of them (Just my opinion anyway).

Other than that, everything looks good :)

[Beav`]

I like it. The style is good and easy to read, and it's a nice touch being able to hide some of the left column content. I even registered, which is a rare thing for me :D

[dooch]

completevb skin i think, yeah nice one.

[KTBleeding]

It's not bad looking, but if it's a purchased skin like the comment above states, I have to rant for a bit. If your forum is about web design / development, you could / probably should have a very nice custom made skin that looks very nice, and functions even nicer. You're advertising that you have the skills, show them off. premade skins are the worst way to do that.

Couple of other things.. Arcade? Why? It's a coder forum.. When I clicked in the arcade, it only showed that 2 members of yours even have an interest in it. 2 out of 150+?? Not something you'd expect on a web design forum.

Now, videos? Cool idea, I'm sure I can go there and get informative how-to's / tutorials / etc... Oh, maybe not.. instead it's just lolcats and "animation vs animator" garbage. It doesn't really serve a purpose if it's not being used to drive the focus of your site.

If you're going to compete with the big guys, you need to take it more seriously, I think. Make people WANT to come back. if you have a nice video tutorial, you're going to get return visitors constantly.. But if you have useless internet junk like every other message board, it's going to go in one eye, and out the other.

I like the idea and direction of your site, but I'm not going to sign up for it unless it's beneficial to me to do it. Give me something I don't know, teach me something, inspire me and I'll come back. Give me the same shit, different forum and I'm going to run for the hills.

[Stormraven]

Thankyou all for your comments. I have taken every comment on board, and have acted one some of them. Since I posted this thread I have done the following:

Removed the sidebar that was on the left
Removed the games section
Put CSS boxes around the postbit_legacy details
Sorted the navbar out and added a few extra things to it
Updated the robots.txt file

I understand the games section was a bad idea, I guess I just wanted to keep members entertained but after reading all of your comments I have taken a different approach and removed the stuff that is not needed, although I am keeping the video section as members to enjoy watching videos and it's a nice little luxury to have. Thankyou for all your comments. Please feel free to give reply with anymore comments you wish to add.

Kind Regards
Stormraven.