Would Appreciate Your Critique & Suggestions
 

Guys are going to have to think outside the box and a little into the ladies world for this one. My community is for doulas, who are--short answer--usually women who help other women in childbirth.

I am a hobby designer, never went to school for it so it's not the best. I did the layout in Photoshop and am still working on it a bit. I've been running this site since Aug 2005 and get sick of the layout about every 6 months or so.

Right now I'm having a hard time making everything that is available on the site visible to the members. A lot of members get lost and most have never used a message board before so they have problems figuring out how to post. I have over 50 mods installed to try to help with some usability issues, but I would love your advice.

So what do you think? It's at www.alldoulas.com. Thanks.

I like the look of your forum. The soft colors go well your theme and are inviting. You seem to have a lot of information and support to offer.

You are right, it is a lot to take in all at once, and would be especially confusing for first time message boarders to find their way around. I think that most forums are like that, very intimidating for first timers, and still confusing for those used to other forum layouts.

i would suggest you apply a global width to your left-sidebar and the container, because on each pageload, the sidebar appear first and takes the whole place, the content appear then, moving the sidebar...

good parenting forum... bookmarked!

Nice design, really easy on the eyes.

It's very pleasant. Good colours, light design. Very very nice ...

Bump? Any others want to comment? Thanks. :)

Really nice work i must say, good use of space , content, right place to put ads , navigation as simple - effective .

Good looking forums , good theme for the topic you got going .. Really great work , i enjoyed your site :p .

Great work. 9.5/10 , maybe the postbits , should be linear , due to the Info displayed on the user bit section , too much for a thank you post and such.

example. http://www.alldoulas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1956

or maybe some ajax , collapse box to display all that info ;).

But other than that, nice skin , icons and content .

Beautiful design however get rid of that annoying popup bar at the top reminding to register. Those annoy me enough when IE pops up one.

Very nice site! Love the design, love the colors, you have a very nice layout that seems very effective. I didn't have any problems navigating through, everything seemed very straight forward. I think you did an amazing job.