I got some heavy critique from some members about the forum design being bad and that I should change it. I'm kind of looking for more opinions so I thought I'd ask here before changing it drastically. Is this forum not user friendly? I appreciate any input! (I am a new member here so I can't post links: the address is www(.)investerium(.)com
yeah it seems that all the links are ease to find but if i might suggest that you change the text color to white or to other light color.
Remember that forum members tend to stay a couple of hour reading and reading... please, use a bigger font The rest look wonderful.
Hello, your forum is good designed, but u need to use light colors in it, black color is very harsh to eyes. and fonts need to be some larger . aston martin looks good in the header.
From a designer's point of view, this is a very inappropriate theme for a forum for your niche. You are targeting people interested in business and money, not 14 year old gamers. Black is not a very welcoming color for this. Your banner choice isn't bad, but definitely not appropriate. Your font's and sections are far too small and insignificant to even be noticed. People will make subconscious judgments within the first second of loading up your website and will decide if they want to stay or not. Nothing about your theme tells me this is a business related forum, if anything at all, it looks like a Car enthusiast board. Needless to say, my commentary may sound harsh, but I don't believe in sugar coating the truth to spare your feelings. If you want to attract the right type of people, you should go look at other forums that do something similar and figure out what made them successful. In terms of the theme, you should definitely use lighter colors, but avoid using too much color. You don't want to look goofy. Something sleek and professional is what you want. Frankly the the least amount of design would be appropriate, since this forum is for business people, and they want to get down to business, not spend time being distracted by your design. Do some research and compare themes of other successful websites in your niche.
Thank you VERY much for the advice, I appreciate it very much! GWiz especially, you have been very helpful to me. Do you have any suggestions on pre-made phpBB themes which I can use, and slightly customize in order to match my forum the best way?
Well you have a few options: a) Find a free theme online b) Find a paid theme online (usually better quality) c) Use a different forum software (consider xenforo or vbulletin), but they are not cheap. For the free themes, you can do a google search. Here are a few links I found: http://www.phpbb.com/styles/ http://www.themesbase.com/ http://www.siteground.com/phpbb-hosting/phpbb-templates.htm If you're in this to make money off your board, then I suggest investing some money into a better quality forum software as mentioned above. Otherwise, I am sure you can probably find an appropriate theme from one of the links above.
make it a bit lighter. also it would be good to make a defult text a little bit bigger I was using ubuntu to check it and look good
I like it. Like other people have said, readability is important so make sure the font, background, etc. will allow the easiest-to-read web pages.
Hey thanks guys, glad the theme works better now. One final question: The banner is temporary because I dont know how I should design it. Any suggestions? Or is it fine the way it currently is?
looks good, i wouldn't change anything, but if you want to change the banner, may be you can make it lighter, and center the title.