CptAwesome — Sun, 23 Jan 2005 19:45:22 +0000

You want to have a consistent colour scheme, and the header bit is not the same blue as the rest of the forum, and thus looks completely out of place.

The corner image's text doesn't need to be rounded, or bumped or the lighting effect it has, that can look good, if done right, but it doesn't look right on your's.

I know it's only supported by IE, but changing the scrollbars can be a nice touch, and you'll want to try and get rid of the horizontal scrollbar in the shoutbox, since it is distracting.

Your jukebox looks like it's empty, if you don't plan on using it, I'd suggest eliminating it from the links at the top, even if you do plan on using it, remove it from the links, and put it back later as a "new feature". Along the same lines, you'd probably want to seperate out the remote sites from the forum functions, and maybe remove the FAQ if it's not an FAQ about you.

The corner links into the forum, but there doesn't seem to be any link back to the main page, you should fix that.

For the contact us, posting your email address, your actual email address is a terrible idea, bots will pick that up, and you'll be back asking for a good spam blocker.

You have a skin in the chooser that has no header, and is generally incomplete, I would remove that.

I hope this seems a little more constructive of criticism.

andyy15 — Sun, 23 Jan 2005 17:44:46 +0000

Well you don't have much of a header at all. It's mostly just ads. So my suggestion is to come up with a creative one which will also support your ads. For example check out the header on this forum. The design on the left makes all the difference. On your website the blue cuts off right before the ad making your header awkward.

kpmurphy100 — Sun, 23 Jan 2005 17:35:08 +0000

well it would be nice if you told me what is wrong with my header

andyy15 — Sun, 23 Jan 2005 04:04:15 +0000

Well this website is very plain hard to review looks like basic vBulletin board design. Here are a few of my suggestions. Create a better slogan that’s catchy. Create a logo and fix up your header.

kpmurphy100 — Fri, 21 Jan 2005 23:33:08 +0000

im getting new skins anyway, thank you adding some content hopefully too

heebiejeebieclu — Fri, 21 Jan 2005 19:41:22 +0000

Whoah cpt!!!!
It's not that bad. Silly gradient???

kpmurphy100 — Fri, 21 Jan 2005 00:39:58 +0000

what are you talking about, where, the shoutbox? the banner? explain before you critisize

CptAwesome — Thu, 20 Jan 2005 10:50:35 +0000

It looks unfinished, why on earth do you have a tiny box in the top left, in a silly gradient, and all the words mushed together, when you have 600 pixels to go, and when I clicked it, it sent me to the forum, which is ok, I suppose, but your link to the forum, shouldn't be the top thing on the page, causing a massive amount of whitespace. It just looks like sloppy lazy work.

kpmurphy100 — Thu, 20 Jan 2005 05:11:03 +0000

azblk wrote: Ok I just did a missive on a very similar site and I will tell you what I told him. But before I do that just wanted to comment on layout and colors, NOT GOOD, if you must use a CMS get a decent one, XOOPs, MAMBO and POST NUKE are very good with open source cms with alot of users, hacks and support. Also CONTENT IS KING, if you build it they will come. but you dont want them to come to an empty site lacking content and you expect to stay or join. Work on your site first, change the layout, colors, add content and then promote.
This is what I told the other person:
Is this supposed to be strictly a forum site? Forums like dating site are usually very hard to develop because your content is the members who are posting or create profiles. Now no one wants to join a site with low or no membership and when you dont have members how are going to get them if no one wil join because you dont have them in the first place, "catch 22". I suggest you mkae your site content heavy with teen issues, celebrity gossip and all the stuff that typically garners a teens attention and have the forums complementary to your site not the main draw. If you really want to grow the forums you can start a new thread fron each article or page you have with a simple "discuss this article" link at the bottom of each page.

ok thank you for the advice!, ive installed vB because i finally got it, and now ive installed a content management system, all i need is the content

fifeclub — Tue, 18 Jan 2005 15:19:45 +0000

I agree with azblk's comments about content. Since your site is nothing more that a forum, you are only as good as your member's posts. There are no quick fixes and it may take time to build it up. If you're dedicated towards building this verbal content here's a trick I've used in the past.... talk to yourself. Seriously, create an alter ego or two and occasionally reply to your own posts under different usernames. Don't go crazy with this or do it in a way that it's obviouls you're having a conversation with yourself (that would make you look pretty dumb), but if you just do it once in a while to spur further discussion then do it. Just remember to wait a while before responding to yourself. Nothing gives yourself away more than a post in a sparely used forum that gets a reply from a user with only a few previous posts, only minutes after the thread was started.

Now your other problem is branding. You don't have too much to work with. It seems your entire brand is that logo. I'll be honost... it's not good. It's just a coulple of round-edged rectagles with text in them. But since I can't teach you how to be more creative, I can tell you what you can change about this design.
1) You've got a blue title over blue background. Can't read it! Make the title text white or some other light color, possibly with an edge if necessary to seperate it from the background.
2) Your title graphic says the same thing as your title tag (which shows up in the browser window). IMHO, that's not easy to read either. My rule of thumb is that anything more than two words in a domain without dashes, capitalize the first letter of each word. So for both your title graphic and title tag, brand yourself as TeensToTal.com. See how it's much easier to read it at a quick glance. You didn't need to figure out where to seperate the words. (note: This is only for visual branding. I advise using all lowercase when coding links to your url.)
3) The text links inside your logo are also blue over blue, but they're an even closer shade of blue to the background color. Can't see at all. Make them white.

Good luck.