I think this site looks great. This is my best ever. Tell me what you think. http://online-businesses.editboard.com/ After a few minutes, I feel like it looks like a casino site. Is that true?
I have been doing some website work for some years now, and i agree with alstar70 here. The color choice is bad. Dark burgundy, Light Burgundy, Dark Green and Light blue text? hmm... If you dont know what kinda colors who go good together, you should do some research. Look at other similar sites first.
For good colorschemes try: http://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html They generate several colors that work well together.
I agree about colors being too dark. For a businss diectory forum you want light colors that promte openess and trust not dark ones that stir the more evil/hidden/dark emotions. Change the colors and it's good. Also don't try and be everything to everyone or you will be nothing to no one. Not sur what the lovy dovy area is there not sure if anyone will talk business then talk about personal or lack of personal problems lol. Either way good job get it going.
That's definitely a helpful site to help you get started. Also I'd lose the earth picture at the top and just have the site title as the header. It's a good start and reaching out for feedback is a smart choice for that will help improve your future projects.
I don't like it at all I'm afraid. As grg said, it certainly does look like a mid 90s site, it also looks like a 10 year old made it. If I were you I would scrap the whole concept, go and learn more about web design and most certainly learn more about colour harmonization.
I'll be honest, it hurts my eyes to look at for any length of time. And if your background colour wasn't too dissimilar to the table then it wouldn't annoy me so much looking at it in widescreen. Green's a hard colour to pull off for a whole site IMO.
Ouch, no offence but that design is so bad for the eyes and I would not choose to be apart of your community because of this.
After viewing that website I had to reinstall my browser! FireFox wouldn't start up anymore... I don't know if IE7 has the same problems.
If it is your ever best site then it means that you need a lot of training. You should learn more about website designing . I am sorry if you mind it .