Club Acuarios Marinos --> Please review

[Reef Man]

Hi,
This is the biggest comunity aquarium hobby in Mexico.

Please review my site

Any recomendation is very welcome. It is a totally in spanish site.

Thanks in advance.

http://www.acuarios-marinos.com

[Reef Man]

No reviews?

[Shelley_c]

Okay, you have to settle for me reviewing your forum. I apologize in advance. I'm english so my english is bad.

Your logo layout is nice, though the design itself is poor. Judging by the thread title (and I could be way off the mark here) is I was expecting a colourfull, vibrant looking logo. Something with tropical fish or something. Again, I could be way off the mark in what your site is about but the logo design isn't anything special although the layout of the logo gives the logo a great potential for a nicer, visually improved design.

The noavatar script on the right should be placed elsewhere. It's hard to view the no avatar design on the same kind of background colour it's being applied upon. Also, imo, it would look better placed somewhere other than the header.

Looking on the forumhome. Is there any need for the moderator column? To me this just takes up valuable space where it would be better spent on spanning the other areas. People know whos staff, they don't need an extra field telling them who's god.

Seriously, I suggest getting rid of the moderator column. I scrolled down further and the height of the forums is gigantic. There's no need for it. Also, the extra images would look better aligned alongside the forum titles instead of underneath them. A more uniformed looking forum is always more pleasing to the eyes and tus far the forum look and feel feel a little irratic or atleast it does to me.

The forum style itself isn't all that great. Whenever I'm about to review a marine related forum I always invision vibrant images and a nice visually vibrant style and always walk away feeling disappointed. Because it's not my style/site I don't feel that bad but I will say you could improve on the design and by replacing geneic icons which bare no relevance to the niche of your site you would be amazed what a simple looking style with the right images could do.

Replace the threadmarkers (Forumdisplay). Default vbulletin icons really give off a bad visually experience and do nothing for your site. Replace them for something that is relevant to your site which would also apply to the rest of the images lingering throughout your forum.

Like I said, the biggest problem i have is the length of your forum index. The main cause of this is the moderator column you have set to be enabled which can easily be disabled in your admincp and massively reduce the amount of scrolling members and visitors will be forced to do when visiting.

Hopefully, this review will compensate for the lack of reviews you got and my english was easily deciphered. Regardless of my critique, goodluck.

[Reef Man]

First,
I want to say thank you for your review. It is very ineteresting.
I have some comments where maybe you can tell me more:

Originally Posted by Shelley_c

Okay, you have to settle for me reviewing your forum. I apologize in advance. I'm english so my english is bad.

Your logo layout is nice, though the design itself is poor. Judging by the thread title (and I could be way off the mark here) is I was expecting a colourfull, vibrant looking logo. Something with tropical fish or something. Again, I could be way off the mark in what your site is about but the logo design isn't anything special although the layout of the logo gives the logo a great potential for a nicer, visually improved design.

The noavatar script on the right should be placed elsewhere. It's hard to view the no avatar design on the same kind of background colour it's being applied upon. Also, imo, it would look better placed somewhere other than the header.

Regarding the logo, I saw you are a designer, I will contact you for a quote. The same for the avatar script.

Looking on the forumhome. Is there any need for the moderator column? To me this just takes up valuable space where it would be better spent on spanning the other areas. People know whos staff, they don't need an extra field telling them who's god.

Seriously, I suggest getting rid of the moderator column. I scrolled down further and the height of the forums is gigantic. There's no need for it. Also, the extra images would look better aligned alongside the forum titles instead of underneath them. A more uniformed looking forum is always more pleasing to the eyes and tus far the forum look and feel feel a little irratic or atleast it does to me.

Regarding the moderator column, You are right. There is no necessity. I already take it off.

The extra images on the forum description, I already tryied to place them aligned without success. Any recomendation?

The forum style itself isn't all that great. Whenever I'm about to review a marine related forum I always invision vibrant images and a nice visually vibrant style and always walk away feeling disappointed. Because it's not my style/site I don't feel that bad but I will say you could improve on the design and by replacing geneic icons which bare no relevance to the niche of your site you would be amazed what a simple looking style with the right images could do.

About generic icons, wich ones are you referring to? Maybe a need a quote for that too.

Replace the threadmarkers (Forumdisplay). Default vbulletin icons really give off a bad visually experience and do nothing for your site. Replace them for something that is relevant to your site which would also apply to the rest of the images lingering throughout your forum.

DO you think the attached picture can do the trick?

Like I said, the biggest problem i have is the length of your forum index. The main cause of this is the moderator column you have set to be enabled which can easily be disabled in your admincp and massively reduce the amount of scrolling members and visitors will be forced to do when visiting.

Hopefully, this review will compensate for the lack of reviews you got and my english was easily deciphered. Regardless of my critique, goodluck.

This was solved as you recommend.
And thanks again, yes. your review compensate it.

please contact me by pm for the quotes I already mentioned.

Regards.

[Shelley_c]

Your welcome,

I'm not taking on any work but if your thinking of hiring someone be very carefull who you hire here. There's been a lot of scamming so before you part with your hard earned cash do you homework and background checking on the person you decide to hire for the job you need doing.

With regards to the alignment issue I once had images such as yours allocated in each forum conveying that particular forum. If you search the mods database you'll find a solution to the alignment problem it's very easy and you shouldn't find it to difficult to fix.

The generic images I'm referring to are the forum status icons. There's nothing visually wrong with them but they don't suit the niche your forum is. I noticed you posted some clownfish. That's a good start and you seem to have got the idea. Don't settle for the first images you come across there are plenty of visually better, higher quality icons of clown fish on the net so hold out untill you find the right icons that will compliment your forum/style.

Nice work and good call in removing the moderator column. Good to see you agreed and it's saved you tons of space and a sore finger with the scrolling you would have to do each time you want to visit a forum near the footer.

The atachments you posted (which I commented on above in this reply). Yes, it's a good start but don't settle for the first images you come across. If need be hold out for a while if it means that your waiting for a higher quality looking set but your on the right track with those clownfish. Starfish, corals etc would be something you should look into and possibly intergrating these small icons into say your button sets for that extra marine feeling. Think rich blues green and yellows and you won't go wrong.

Most importantly, be carefull who you hire (if you decide to hire but I am swamped with work and cannot take on any additional work on. Sorry.

[Reef Man]

Thank you again my friend.
I already was scammed for 3 peoples here, and I will make a campain against them.

Thank you for your recommendations, I really will take them in consideration.

Regarding the moderator column, I was looking for a solution, but I never thought about remove it. Thanks for that TIP.

Please any other recommendation is welcome.

[Shelley_c]

Why doesn't that surprise me. Sorry to hear you've been scammed 3 times I don't think i could express in words how I would feel if that happened to me so instead I'll just grab a sledge hammer and smash my two monitors to get some idea.

Be very vigilant in future. Anyway, the reason why I'm replying is I took a look at your logo and thought that a nice beach/skyline scene would be? If you could break the logo into 3 areas, with 1/3 as sand, the middle 3rd as the ocean and and top 3rd as the skyline with possibly a palm tree on the left with vibrant text (name of your site) shooting out of it. Or, possibly have a couple of nicely cropped clown fish shooting out at different angles on the left. I'm thinking rich golden yellow for the sand and cyan light blue for the skyline something that gives off a tropical vibe.

This could easily be adapted and implemented to the rest of the style with vibrant icons running throughout. In my head It's all planned out and easy to suggest but if you could invision it (and possibly read my mind as well) the tropical theme would be a nice path to take for the site. Heck, go extreme with the colours with the greens, blues and richer colours of the spectrum.

May sound extreme but visit a travel agents and grab some booklets and this will give you the ideas on what to add in the way of colours. If I have time tomorrow I will pick up some booklets and scan them in for you to show you a few examples and you could possibly expand on that and implement your own stamp to this and make it a mini project for yourself.

Keep the style simple. I cannot state this enough that you don't have to have a complex style you would be amazed what a simple style will do with the right colours used. Let the icons and images do the talking, it will be the images/icons that break out a style and from experience visually superior icons and images will make a mediocre looking style look great.

As stated above, If i have the time tomorrow I will pop into the travel agents and steal a few booklets from them and pretend I'm interested in taking a holiday and scan some imagery and colours for you so you have a foundation to build from pending your up to the task in creating a site that you are proud of instead of one your merely settling with.