review my site

[CarpCharacin]

My site does not have a very good name. My friend came up with the name Dude Talk Forums and i could not come up with anything better. It is essentially a general discussion forum. Here is a link: http://dudetalk.info

[ForceHSS]

Skin colour is like someone was sick all over it. The banner needs to be smaller

[CarpCharacin]

Originally Posted by ForceHSS

Skin colour is like someone was sick all over it. The banner needs to be smaller

there are actually 5 other skins available in the style selector. The only one who was sick all over it was my other admin who is no longer an admin lol. I mean he tried to mess up the site. I designed the skin.

[HM666]

I'm sorry if this comes across harsh, but the other 5 skins are not really all that much better. Do yourself a favor and get a custom skin or if you cannot swing paying for one of those buy a premium skin online somewhere instead. The skins you have are really painful to look at, they are too bright and would be hard to look at for a long time.

When you have people sign up on your forums you want them to hang out for long periods of time to chat & post, not post one thing and run away or not bother posting at all if they cannot sit there and be blinded by the skin. You could even go back to the default skin and it would be better. Its hard to notice anything else because the skins are pretty distracting.

Things To Keep In Mind:

1. Remember you want to appeal to many people not just a few. By using super bright colors in your skins you will turn away some who may have stayed otherwise. Having a nice skin is important but having good content and members for a forum is more important. You will not get either if you blind them with the skin.

2. The name really will not matter much if you appeal to many people at once and if you have good content on your site. People will post and get involved if they are engaged.

3. People have all different tastes in what they like. Maybe try toning the skin colors down a bit and have them not be in your face like. Its better to have 1 or 2 good quality skins than 5 not so good ones.

Some Other Stuff To Make Sure About:

You said that you had an admin that left already, there are a few things that you should now do since this person no longer is on your forum to protect yourself.

1. Sounds silly but make sure you have deleted their account. Or at least change the password using a site like THIS, although I suggest you delete them totally.

2. Make sure that they are not the one who bought the hosting, the vBulletin license, and the domain name. If they did buy them from them RIGHT NOW. I've seen people and have had clients in the past that got totally burned by someone in an instance like this. If everything is in their name then you have absolutely no rights what-so-ever and would get screwed if they decided to pull everything out from under you.

3. Check the config.php file and make sure that they did not put their ID as an admin there. If they have delete it. In your config.php look for:

	//	****** USERS WITH ADMIN LOG VIEWING PERMISSIONS ******

and then below that change the ID numbers to only reflect ones that you want to be there.

$config['SpecialUsers']['canviewadminlog'] = '';

	//	****** USERS WITH ADMIN LOG PRUNING PERMISSIONS ******
	//	The users specified here will be allowed to remove ("prune") entries from the admin
	//	log. See the above entry for more information on the format.
$config['SpecialUsers']['canpruneadminlog'] = '';

	//	****** USERS WITH QUERY RUNNING PERMISSIONS ******
	//	The users specified here will be allowed to run queries from the control panel.
	//	See the above entries for more information on the format.
	//	Please note that the ability to run queries is quite powerful. You may wish
	//	to remove all user IDs from this list for security reasons.
$config['SpecialUsers']['canrunqueries'] = '';

	//	****** UNDELETABLE / UNALTERABLE USERS ******
	//	The users specified here will not be deletable or alterable from the control panel by any users.
	//	To specify more than one user, separate userids with commas.
$config['SpecialUsers']['undeletableusers'] = '';

	//	****** SUPER ADMINISTRATORS ******
	//	The users specified below will have permission to access the administrator permissions
	//	page, which controls the permissions of other administrators
$config['SpecialUsers']['superadministrators'] = '';

Be sure to make the changes only inside the two '' like so:

$config['SpecialUsers']['canviewadminlog'] = '1,2,3';

4. Change ALL the admin passwords & your server passwords + FTP passwords if your old admin had those. Change them immediately.

I hope this information helps you and does not discourage you. Creating skins and getting a site launched is not extremely easy, the fact that you are trying means a lot.

[CarpCharacin]

the old admin never had root access to the forum. All he had was a full admin account. He just tried to mess up stuff in the admincp. His username was DudeGoodman. He actually turned out to be DudeBadman.

[HM666]

Originally Posted by CarpCharacin

the old admin never had root access to the forum. All he had was a full admin account. He just tried to mess up stuff in the admincp. His username was DudeGoodman. He actually turned out to be DudeBadman.

LOL oh dear. I can relate, I've been there. One reason I usually never have another admin on my site. That is good that he did not have that kind of access. I've seen some real messes in the past on a person's site because of a disgruntled admin.

[ForceHSS]

Originally Posted by CarpCharacin

there are actually 5 other skins available in the style selector. The only one who was sick all over it was my other admin who is no longer an admin lol. I mean he tried to mess up the site. I designed the skin.

All skins are bad

[CarpCharacin]

what makes them so bad?

[ForceHSS]

The skin colour and the bad made banner

You also have a space in the coding that needs fixed

[CarpCharacin]

no space shows up for me.