Megan — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 13:28:30 +0000

This is a template, right? I'm sure I've seen that before, or something very similar. That's okay, I don't think it really matters for a site like this.

The first problem I see is that there's a lot of "stuff" at the top of the page. you can't even see the top of the forums with all that stuff there. Remove one set of google ads and the announcements and you could move that up a lot higher.

The big "register" link isn't all that inviting. Better to have a proper welcome message that explains what this site is about and invites people to join.

The first section of the forums is all your administrative stuff. I think the first section should be the one that's most important to members (not to yourself!). What do they want to see more, the free hosting requests or your boring announcements? My opinion is that most members only vaguely care about what's going on with your site, especially when they first join. Better to make the most attractive content the most prominent part of the page. The way it is they have to scroll more than halfway down to find it.

There's a sticky in that hosting requests forum that reads "How to Reques Hosting".

This is a bit of a strange way to have people sign up for free hosting, IMO. I don't quite understand why a forum is being used at all, but what-ever