Critique of Boston Terrier Rescue Forum

[m0nde]

I've run my forum, BostonLove, since March, 2005.
The raison d'etre of the forum is to raise money for Boston Terrier Rescue Organisations in the United States and Canada.

Now that the forums have some activity and are under way, I'd like to glean some tips from the vBulletin community.

I haven't bothered changing the main colour scheme, much, though I've made an orange-y "summer" theme.

I'm especially interested in Brinnie's usually scathing review... :nervous:

http://www.bostonlove.org

- Sid

[Tony G]

Can't say I a fan of the query-filled portal, maybe you could use something simpler?

I also think you need to ditch the remainder of the default vB colors, you could make a much nicer colour scheme using the blue background as a base.

Place your shoutbox at the bottom. It A) Defers posting and B) Creates a scroll so that I have to scroll down just to get to the start of your forum list.

You could probably merge some of those inactive forums too to lessen your forum number count.

Few things you can do there.

[m0nde]

Originally Posted by Tony G

Can't say I a fan of the query-filled portal, maybe you could use something simpler?

I also think you need to ditch the remainder of the default vB colors, you could make a much nicer colour scheme using the blue background as a base.

Place your shoutbox at the bottom. It A) Defers posting and B) Creates a scroll so that I have to scroll down just to get to the start of your forum list.

You could probably merge some of those inactive forums too to lessen your forum number count.

Few things you can do there.

You're absolutely right. When I move to 3.5 (once that thing is complete) I'm going to get rid of the portal. I will work on moving the shoutbox. I'm going to have to fight with my other administrators about merging the forums, because they're the ones who chose those.

Thanks for your input.

- Sid

[Princeton]

It's a fact that the upper half of a web page (before scrolling) is the most important part of the page.

IMHO, you are wasting this space -- HUGE HEADER IMAGE and HUGE SPONSOR/SEARCH BLOCK. This is the first thing that your visitors will see and most visitors are interested in content. You are not providing that in this 'area'.

All I'm saying is that you need to GRAB your visitors right away. To do this you will need to minimize this area.

You have 2 LOG IN sections (navbar / left col).
The LAST POST ICON is poorly made.

On the forum main page, I recommend removing the image table info ... it takes up a lot of space and viewers are only interested in the image(s).

[Tony G]

Originally Posted by princeton

IMHO, you are wasting this space -- HUGE HEADER IMAGE and HUGE SPONSOR/SEARCH BLOCK. This is the first thing that your visitors will see and most visitors are interested in content. You are not providing that in this 'area'.

Those are my thoughts too. Need to make use of the first visible space of your forum to members.

[Brinnie]

Funny thing is...

I don't think you have any idea what your site looks like in FireFox.

[m0nde]

Originally Posted by brinnie

don't think you have any idea what your site looks like in FireFox.

Actually I do!

The damned vBadvanced box pushes crap all the way over!
But if you refresh on that same page, that goes away(?)
I'm a mac person and am very aware of how stuff looks in firefox and safari.

Luckily it's not doing that in the main http://www.bostonlove.org/forums page.

I have to cater to IE users who use PCs.

How the hell does one fix that?

- Sid

[m0nde]

I've fixed the firefox problem by not specifying a table width of 100% in the left boxes on my front page.

I'm getting ready to move to 3.5 by creating a whole new look and have taken into consideration the great constructive criticism above. Thank you very much.

- Sid

[m0nde]

Originally Posted by Tony G

I also think you need to ditch the remainder of the default vB colors, you could make a much nicer colour scheme using the blue background as a base.

Tony, based on your suggestion, I've come up with the following: BostonLove Aqua 0.99 β.

Please comment and critique the new look!

- Sid

[vBTotal]

Whats Up with your uber black lines in the header