Don't flame me to bad ......

[chief thunder]

Here is my first talk forum and have been at it for a few weeks in my spare time. http://www.usaaug.com

Just looking for some opinions on the style & layout and any advice etc from a few of you experienced folk. I am just a firearms enthusiasts during the day and struggle with the PC during play time.
The opening index.html page is temp, I am working on a better index page now, just having a bit of a hard time.
After I design a nice looing index.html page with my frontpage software and later publish using FTP to the server some of the code doesn't upload correctly.

Thank you!

[TTG]

WOW .. my poor mouse began overheating scrolling through all the forums.
Do you really need so many forums with 23 members ?

Suggest you reduce the numbers and wait for members.

[chief thunder]

I wanted to make it a done deal asap more opportunities to get that one member to join and post?
We hope traffic picks up, its really only been fully online a few weeks. We won't be flooding it with advertisements so its a complete show for now.

Six different manufacturers of the same weapon so I did a forum specific to each manufacturer ( some members don't like to play fair and fight about which model is best " they don't know how to play nice together in the same rooms.

[veenuisthebest]

i really like the design and color !! by the way.. i think there's definitely a need to reduce the number of forums for NOW !! the page is getting toooo long ..

wait for a few days/months.. feel the need and then go on ..

However.. if you think you must keep them.. then why not create Sub-Forums of similar categories.. would look far better !! :up:

also ...keep your Forum index as your homepage..or you may move to vbAdvanced !!

[chief thunder]

Okay;
Now I will have to decide which ones to "termintate"

[chief thunder]

Okay;
I try to listen twice as much as I talk and took the advice given.
Made a bunch of sub-forums and decided to go VBAdvanced as well.
My homepage is now up.
And I just got done with my Payme module, and am now doing a few code adjustments in the nav-bar template to be able to get back to the homepage from the Forums.

Hey; I like being a bit out of the norm. is she getting better?

Suggestions on something to do next?
Here

[KTBleeding]

Yet again, vBadvanced has failed.. everyone probably already knows my beef with vBa, but please tell me how a normal visitor is ever going to find your forums?

I can find your forums because I've seen so many of these vBa's that I know where to go.. but the average visitor isn't going to know to click on your logo to go to the forums. And they're not going to know to scroll down and look in the left "Site Navigation" block for the tiny "Forums" link that doesn't stand out at all.

Nope. They're going to look in your navbar for a link, and there isn't one. If you don't fix that, don't expect too much traffic to your forums.

Also, as stated above, get rid of ALL those forums. Keep it simple. It's such a blur scrolling through your numerous amounts of categories with 1 - 2 forums in them. Very irrelevant with such a small member base.

To be honest, what you're doing is having people interested enough to sign up to your forums, and probably scaring them away because they have no idea what they need to do on your site.

[chief thunder]

Originally Posted by KTBleeding

Yet again, vBadvanced has failed.. everyone probably already knows my beef with vBa, but please tell me how a normal visitor is ever going to find your forums?


To be honest, what you're doing is having people interested enough to sign up to your forums, and probably scaring them away because they have no idea what they need to do on your site.

Yes; it sounds to me like you do have some serious issues with VBA.
Even the Vbulleting.com site doesn't have FORUM in the navbar which causes one to shift their eyes maybe 1/8"? :erm:

Anyway;
I just added the forum link to the Navbar
Though; I don't think we will have very many drug induced individuals that will be googling or viewing our forums that might need this

[KTBleeding]

Originally Posted by chief thunder

Even the Vbulleting.com site doesn't have FORUM in the navbar

The have "Community" though, which is a link to the forums. That's what I meant, not actually the word "Forums". But believe me, I find it incredibly annoying to have to scroll down to the bottom of vBulletin.com's forums to get back to the main home page, or to have to manually type in the url..

It's that way for the simple reason to show customers what they are going to get, but it is still aggravating. I feel that if a website is going to have forums, and a separate site, it should at least be integrated with design, and navigation.

Originally Posted by chief thunder

I just added the forum link to the Navbar

Great!

Originally Posted by chief thunder

Though; I don't think we will have very many drug induced individuals that will be googling or viewing our forums that might need this

Huh??

i am drug induced and i am googling....