[Bryan Ex]

I'm neither a coder or designer but like you I am a 10 year veteran using vb. Doesn't mean I know a lot, it just means I've messed up more than many others.

Took a look at your site and as a user I have to say I think you've done a good job working with a black background without it looking like a gamers site. One thing I might suggest watching for is the graphics used in the various banner ads. The white and/or very light coloured ads really jump out and given the starkness seems to take away from the rest of the page content. If you have a choice in the ads look for darker ones that will better complement your color palette.

Now this opinion is strictly me speaking but I find the whole portal type page with side bars and different sections to be too much information all at once. It may be well suited for your members and I don't know the body building community at all but I would be really interested in seeing some study results on how visitors process a portal type page. I do prefer the single sidebar on the forum page rather than double sidebars on the home page. For the record I'm mostly dealing with rural and agricultural Internet users that do not want too much information too fast and hate any kind of changes so I cater to a different audience.

Nice the way the various sections keep the theme and consistent presentation. Not sure if they are mods or integrated scripts. Integrated being a little harder to pull off.

GaryT mentioned your header so I took a specific look at that (remember I am not a designer). I think it's a good job on the graphics but I personally don't like having a banner in your header. My feeling is that it's prime screen space that should be reserved for your business (website) and not for ads. There's also a lot of empty space between your logo and the ad. This is a topic I've just posted about vb.org for my own site as well and received a great suggestion that I'll be working in shortly. Over all I say you should be pretty happy with it RichieBoy67. Even the older forums still have things to tweak and/or improve and all of it is a matter of opinion.