Would like some feedback...

[jimsflies]

I finally took the plunge and updated from vb3.8 to vb4. I don't have as many customizations as I did before, but I wanted to return back to a more "stock" look.

I'm looking for some comments. Let me know what you think.

http://www.captivereefs.com

[Max Taxable]

It's a pretty fishy site.

[ForceHSS]

Kind of a finding nemo look to it

[Max Taxable]

Seriously though - it is very clean and well organized, everything is easy to find and it is intuitive, and easy on the eyes.

You did a hell of a good job optimizing it too. You should be proud.

WebPageTest

[webmastersun]

Look good but may be you set background-position:fixed; will be better view.

[ForceHSS]

As guests can't see articles or what's new you should set the permissions so only members see them tabs

[jimsflies]

Originally Posted by Max Taxable

Seriously though - it is very clean and well organized, everything is easy to find and it is intuitive, and easy on the eyes.

You did a hell of a good job optimizing it too. You should be proud.

WebPageTest

Thanks for all your help on http://ozzmodz.com and giving me the intial kick in the pants to make it better. I still see some ways to shave some requests so I haven't stopped yet.

Originally Posted by webmastersun

Look good but may be you set background-position:fixed; will be better view.

You don't like the parallax background? I thought the way it scrolls up with the content is neat. Although subtle, the background under the breadcrumbs allows you to see the water of the background image behind it which moves away as you scroll down the page...the hope was to make it look like you are looking up through the water surface and as the background comes into view, the hope was it would encourage checking out the entire page rather than just the top.

While I think its cool though, if the popular opinion is to ditch it, I'd consider it for sure. I don't want to fix the position though as I think having the reef scene at the top makes page look too busy. (I could make a new background that was shorter to hug the bottom and ditch the current one.)

Originally Posted by ForceHSS

As guests can't see articles or what's new you should set the permissions so only members see them tabs

Good point...I'm working on a home page using the CMS system, so the article tab would eventually go somewhere, but in the mean time it makes sense to disable it.

I also wonder about keeping the Blog tab. My site didn't have blogs before so there are no blogs to display. None of my members have gone in there and created a blog and the site has been upgrade for a few weeks now. Not sure its worthwhile to have blogs or not? Does anyone with a forum site get a lot of bloggers?


I appreciate you guys taking a minute to look and give me feedback.

[ForceHSS]

No one on my site used blogs until I started to post. If you start using them others might follow

[CharlieDelta]

Originally Posted by jimsflies

You don't like the parallax background? I thought the way it scrolls up with the content is neat. Although subtle, the background under the breadcrumbs allows you to see the water of the background image behind it which moves away as you scroll down the page...the hope was to make it look like you are looking up through the water surface and as the background comes into view, the hope was it would encourage checking out the entire page rather than just the top.

How do you achieve this? Some CSS tricks? I would be interested to know.

[jimsflies]

@CharlieDelta Its funny you are asking... I'm on your site thinking about how you've done your background right now. I'm also looking at your webpage tests as I type this wondering how you load 2MB in 6 seconds. Are you attributing that speed to cloudflare?

Regarding my background, I think my background may be easier than yours... grab the script here: http://jonraasch.com/blog/scrolling-...-jquery-plugin

If you need any help implementing let me know.

I'm considering something like you have done to avoid having as big of a background image to load. I'm thinking I may be able to get away with a couple smaller files with a fixed background at the top and another background that sits at the bottom of the page.