Need your ideas please

[imported_HexOnxOnx]

Hi all

Well I have spent countless hours and money to get my advice site open and filled with content that I think teens and young adults would like. I have no ideas on how to get this out to people. Google has the site listed as well as all the articles and pages etc. I have also joined a few other teen sites and put my site in my sig.

I need to find out from members here is what do you think I should change if anythng and what should I add if anything? I am willing to give this thing at least a year to get going, the hosting is cheap and reliable. I just need things to get people to join. I had in the beginning included an arcade hack but seriously I gave that up when I got more involved with the content, an arcade didn't seem to fit anymore.

As far as vB, I am using 2.3.2. Why no RC1? My CMS will only work with this version so far till the end of the month. Even them I want to get a new skin desinged that will work with RC1+. Hopefully I can get BlindChild to do this. I am pleased myself with the way things look but I am not you!

Any and all suggestions are welcomed, thanks. Teen Advice Center

[Brad]

Have you tried banner exchanges? Try to become affilated with bigger sites that are targeted towards teens/young adults, just dont do this with other advice sites, try anime, gaming etc.

[Walab]

Your website was very informative, but the design is wrong (for loss of a better word). I was thinking yahoo or msn for the kind of design; but it looks like a personal website. I suggest you remove "latest articles and suggestions" from the "left" column, define a fixed "content" column (varies on search page), keep the "right" column as it is. I like the color scheme on the search page, carry it. Forum and webmail should run through the "content" column (iframes or includes), rather than linking to another directory. Those are just my suggestions.

[Michael2]

One thing I hate about these portal-type sites is that the link to the forums is not very prominent (though yours is better than most). I would work on adding a larger, flashier graphic pointing people to the boards.

Other than that the only thing that really stands out is that your header doesn't really seem to match the style of the rest of the page.

Overall I think you've done a really good job.

[imported_HexOnxOnx]

Wow thanks everybody. I was thinking about vreating some kind of graphic to get to the boards. I will do some thinking on it and see what I can come up with. As far as the design on the entry page, it was the first thing that I really did as far as a design on a page though it's simple so because I did it all myself I kind of liked it. As for the latest articles, I'm not sure it's a good idea to remove them....it's a main part of the CMS, though I could remove it, it's a quick way for visitors to know what is new and if anything may interest them.
I may redesign the whole main page soon, it's not that hard, I just need to spend a day on it.