Would Appreciate Your Critique & Suggestions

[fusiongoddess]

Guys are going to have to think outside the box and a little into the ladies world for this one. My community is for doulas, who are--short answer--usually women who help other women in childbirth.

I am a hobby designer, never went to school for it so it's not the best. I did the layout in Photoshop and am still working on it a bit. I've been running this site since Aug 2005 and get sick of the layout about every 6 months or so.

Right now I'm having a hard time making everything that is available on the site visible to the members. A lot of members get lost and most have never used a message board before so they have problems figuring out how to post. I have over 50 mods installed to try to help with some usability issues, but I would love your advice.

So what do you think? It's at www.alldoulas.com. Thanks.

[bkellyx3]

I like the look of your forum. The soft colors go well your theme and are inviting. You seem to have a lot of information and support to offer.

You are right, it is a lot to take in all at once, and would be especially confusing for first time message boarders to find their way around. I think that most forums are like that, very intimidating for first timers, and still confusing for those used to other forum layouts.

i would suggest you apply a global width to your left-sidebar and the container, because on each pageload, the sidebar appear first and takes the whole place, the content appear then, moving the sidebar...

good parenting forum... bookmarked!

[no mods]

Nice design, really easy on the eyes.

[wtricks]

It's very pleasant. Good colours, light design. Very very nice ...

[fusiongoddess]

Bump? Any others want to comment? Thanks.

[Xtrato]

Really nice work i must say, good use of space , content, right place to put ads , navigation as simple - effective .

Good looking forums , good theme for the topic you got going .. Really great work , i enjoyed your site .

Great work. 9.5/10 , maybe the postbits , should be linear , due to the Info displayed on the user bit section , too much for a thank you post and such.

example. http://www.alldoulas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1956

or maybe some ajax , collapse box to display all that info .

But other than that, nice skin , icons and content .

[ssslippy]

Beautiful design however get rid of that annoying popup bar at the top reminding to register. Those annoy me enough when IE pops up one.

[BrandiDup]

Very nice site! Love the design, love the colors, you have a very nice layout that seems very effective. I didn't have any problems navigating through, everything seemed very straight forward. I think you did an amazing job.