I'm looking for some feedback on my new Football (soccer) forum Footy Madness. I've not really started the SEO or advertising the forum much yet so its almost completely empty. I'm mainly looking for feedback on the look and feel and speed of loading. This is my first PHPBB forum so I'm still getting the hang of it. Thanks in advance Jen
Hello Jenni, There isn't much to critique at the moment, as you've said, but I've made a couple of observations relating to the 'look'. Firstly, (and this may seem trivial but I'll explain why I'm highlighting it shortly) you have Shevchenko as the 'face' of your forum. As a big football fan (Spurs, if you're wondering ) I would consider using Andrei on your header as an error for two reasons; 1. He is badly out of form and has been for the past two seasons. It's so bad in fact that he hasn't scored once in 2008. I realise that at one point he was one of the most prolific strikers in world football, but since his move to Chelsea he has lost popularity, especially in England. 2. Chelsea are hugely unpopular in the UK (except, obviously, with Chelsea fans), where I'm assuming most of your traffic will derive from. For that reason I would suggest considering a team/player with more neutrality. Someone more iconic like Kaka of AC Milan, Ronaldinho of Barcelona etc (or a mix of players from different European leagues to influence posts from international users). The above suggestion is in relation to how you want to market your forum - if this isn't the sort of critique you are looking for (perhaps it's just going to be a hobby rather than an income generator) then discard it. On to the design... To be blunt, the text on the logo is unattractive. The entire header needs a make-over of epic proportions. There is this strange contour effect on the player's face and the crowd which serves no purpose. I'd also consider changing the background color of your AdSense to white, and lose the pink font. Everything else looks fine, as far as forums go. I hope this was of some use to you and I wish you good luck Best Wishes, Jay
@ Capricious It looks like if you click on the header the images change, i've seen one with C Ronaldo and a picture of the New Wembley. @ JenniP Thats a good idea to use, a rotating header. Forum is pretty easy on the eye, colours seem to work well, and I like that when you go to click on a different section like Introductions the block highlights in a bluey colour (sorry if that doesn't make much sense) I also like the bits at the top, the login, register links etc, especially the drop down menus. Apart from that just get some posts and you'll be set.
I would actually agree with all of that, its part of the reason I used the rotating headers, there are 3 player ones, the Shevchenko one, a Cristano Ronaldo one and a Mesi one, the rest are crowd photo or stadium photos from my travels. Those 3 happened to be the best ones I got from a logo competition on here, when I get time I'll get around to making some more as ironically I have loads of player cuts of European players just not English ones. If I was doing it as an income generator I would picked something other than a football forum But I know what you mean. Thats actually quite easy, the text itself isnt part of the logo pictures, but overlayed by CSS it was done this way for this exact reason, later on I will replace it. I agree with that, the redish colour was picked to match the theme on the inner pages where it does make sense, however on the outer pages that colour doesnt appear so as you say it does look out of place. Actually Jay it was exactly the kind of thing I was after thanks again. Jen
Thanks again for everyone's comments. Its always nice to get a bit of feedback from people after all what one person thinks is great can look terrible to others. Looks like so far what I think looks good is not too far from everyone elses Jen
Love the rotating header. Well designed forum with good content and features, clean, clear and simple. my kind of site !
I like the background picture, however it makes the site load a little slowly and jumpes when scrolling down.