Parlancia Forums

[AzH]

I'll keep this related to the default style you have.

Style

It's pleasing on the eye. Not too light, which lighter styles can often be. A good mix.

Layout

The first thing I noticed was the misuse of your Portal. First, you need a link to the forum main page in your navbar. If interested, contact me for a dynamic code that will switch between home (vbadvanced) and forum (forum/index.php) depending upon which page you're on. The link in site navigation is small and easly missed. If it takes more than a few seconds to find the main page you'll be losing visitors.

Regarding misuse. You're not really publishing anything of any value on the portal. Move away from your community annoucements and onto something like latest news or gaming or something people are actually interested in.

Viewing as a guest your hompage is a waste of time. You have 2 "unregistered" messages and no content of any value. I'm running 1680 x 1050 resolution so my "cut" takes in a lot of real estate. All of it useless (sorry).

You should edit the portal beyond the default settings too. For example, you don't need a calendar on the frontpage. Maybe use this space for a live feed of new posts?

Moving onto the main forum.

As a guest it's not all that bad. You should change the default guest message to something more pertinent to the community. You want to be getting a message across to say "HEY YOU, REGISTER!!"

When I sign in though, as a new member.... The random album and welcome block dominate the homepage. I can't see any of your content below the welcome block and random albums block as they are so large.

Points to address:

1. vBAdvanced. Either get rid of it or use it for something worthwhile. Remove guest messages.
2. Navbar. Add a link to forums in it.
3. index.php, strip out the random album block
4. Guest message. Edit beyond the default.