Hello, I just launched costaricaforums.com this weekend and would very much appreciate the community review of the site layout and design. Please feel free to give me all the feedback you consider necessary, good or bad. Thank you for your kind suggestions. .
Nice forum Tapanti! The two things I would mention is that it is very dark. Could you not have a brighter background.. The other things is that you don't mention anything about vacations in Costa Rica as a category, I would thought that would bring in many visitors to the forum who are looking to visit! How about you put a link to 2 of "my" properties in Costa Rica in return for a PR5 link on my site holiday-rentals.uk.com/links.html Pm me if your interested! Darren EDIT: another suggestion visit www.aardvarktravel.net visit the forum in there, and answer questions about costa rica, there's always someone wanting to ask questions! The added bonus is you can put your website in the signature and get new members to your forum [just don't advertise your website unless it's answering a question, otherwise I'll have to kick your arse ] lol
The most important thing about a forum is posts So top of your list is to get good posts up by yourself so that people will read and reply to I have seen wonderful looking forums do absolutly nothing because there was no effort in the launch on the content Forums are the same as any other web site information is king Just my thoughts a good luck
LOL...I agree with 'Fishing Forum' Do what everyone else does...give yourself about 4 aliases..and post some questions and answers to yourself. I thought that was part of *new forum etiquette* regards GEM
Hello everyone, Thank you for the suggestions. Darren: I would definitely be interested in putting the links to “your†properties, and of course, would really appreciate the PR5 link. I will open a Real Estate Listings category and give your user the clearance to put links in the posts. I would just prefer if you can become a member and list them yourself. You know… I need to raise my members list. I have also considered that the forums look a little dark. I’m going to test some brighter backgrounds and some more colorful images. About the vacations in Costa Rica category, I agree it’s definitely a “mustâ€. It’s just that I haven’t added it yet. In fact, there are many more categories that I haven’t added. This is just a pre-launch of the site, that I wanted you, (knowledgeable folks) to check and give me your opinions in the design and technical aspects. I’m also going to visit www.aardvarktravel.net, thank you for the excellent suggestion. ************************************ FF and Gem, Thank you for your kind suggestions too. I honestly didn’t want to do that, but I guess you’re right… everybody seems to follow the “new forum etiquette†LOL. I’m also going to ask some friends to become members and start making some questions that we can answer to each other. Again, my intention in posting this site here at DP for you to review was more kind of a pre-launch for the experienced people. Once I’m convinced the site is ready to go, I’ll begin contacting tour operators, freelance tourism guides, real estate agents, rental companies, foreign residents associations, and any other person or company related with the travel industry in Costa Rica, and invite them to join the forums and “be prepared†for the “official†launch of the site and the beginning of the online marketing campaigns that I have prepared for the site. But yes… I guess even them need to see the forum going, in order to be motivated and begin making posts too. Those were excellent suggestions from all of you. Thank you for taking the time. Regards, Tapanti .
Color looks good to me. I like the contrast. The graphics at the top are cool. Do you make them or some one else? here is what i got from digitalpoints keyword tool: wordtracker costa rica forum 14.0 /day das deutsche costa rica forum 5.0 /day costa rica rainbow gathering forum 4.0 /day Overture costa rica forum 4.1 /day costa forum rica sex 3.2 /day costa rica travel forum 2.6 /day Costa Rica Travel and Vacations You might want to add thee above phrases to your page somehow. ============== Post or swap links here http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=site:groups.yahoo.com+travel&btnG=Search&X=1 or here http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=site:groups.yahoo.com+costa+rica&btnG=Search&X=1 Here are some ideas for forum sub categories: http://directory.google.com/Top/Regional/Central_America/Costa_Rica?tc=1/ http://directory.google.com/Top/Regional/Central_America/Costa_Rica/Travel_and_Tourism/ http://directory.google.com/Top/Regional/Central_America/Travel_and_Tourism/ I have a travel website if you have promotional article for your forum pm me or post it here and I will add it.
Just to throw the cat amongst the pidgeons..i dont think its too dark...the background exagerates the content..thats good i think..if it was light, who knows. although i suppose its not very CostaRica..if you know what i mean....in a 800x600 browser you wont even see the page background...so if you change the way it looks do something inside the page GEM
Gem, Good point about the 800x600 browser. But I also agree that the blue colors I'm using are not very Costa Rica. So, I'm going to try some greens to give it a more "ecological" appearance. I’m also considering customizing the icons and the smilies so that they are more related with the rain forest and all the wonders that Costa Rica has to offer. Thank you again for your insight. Tapanti .
Hi dirtdog1960theone, Sorry I didn’t replied to your post yesterday. Somehow, I skipped it and didn’t notice it until today… it was really weird, but anyway… thank you for your suggestions ang good comments. I liked the blue colors too, but I changed them because I also agreed with the comment made by Gem, about having other colors more widely associated with Costa Rica, such as green, usually associated with nature and forests… and we have plenty of those here. Please let me know what you think about the new colors. I made the graphics at the top myself. Some of them are a little too forced in height, but honestly I made them all (42) in like 2 hours, so I need to dedicate some more time to correct the ones that don’t look very good and add some more new ones. The keywords you list are definitely necessary in my site, but I’m focusing all the “anchoring†efforts towards the keyprhase “Costa Rica Information†which is currently reporting 129.0 /day, and I think my site has the potential to become a major source of Costa Rica Information. Thank you for your offer of publishing a promotional article for my forum on your travel site. Let me know the extension it should have and I’ll send it to you right away. Regards, Tapanti
Hi Tapanti, I spent 60 days in Grecia north of San José in 98, had a lot of fun. I might just go register at the site if I have time. I agree with the others, the bg needs to be lightened up, maybe a cheery green and then tone down/ change the green in the vb settings to a complimentary color, maybe an orange or yellow. Also, I kinda like the idea of rotating the image at the top of the site, but it could also have its drawbacks in that you don't have a strong branding on the site. Maybe use a permanant image or logo in the corner or at the top and rotating images on one side or something to that effect. 10 min. later.... After signing up, I have a couple of other suggestions. 1. Start with fewer forums, so that they will start getting traffic. I know you can use a bunch of user names and start topics, but in my opinion, it would be better to have less, and then when the user traffic comes, let their topics guide you on how to divide up the forums. 2. Sigs disabled. Not only would I like to put a link to my dictionary in a signature, but it's also an added feature for all you users (when you get some). If they can fiddle around and make the forum more "theirs" by customizing a sig, they might be more inclined to stick around. (And I want my link! )
Hi exam, Thank you for your visit to my site as web as the good suggestions. All sound great! I´ll make a couple of tests with the BG, but definitely the logo is a huge MUST that I hadn’t thought on. Excellent suggestion. I will evaluate the idea of cutting down the number of forums. I know seeing a lot of forums with very few (or none) post is not very motivating for the regular visitor. I just wanted to leave the doors open for as many subjects as possible, but I have also thought on the possibility of having a forum for suggestions, where users can request the beginning of new categories… but… thinking it twice… new categories will come by itself as new threads are posted and many people gets involved in them. If they become big enough, they’ll become a new category/forum. About the sigs disabled, I´ll re-open them… the decision of turning them off was made because one of my first visitors was a guy that included like 10 different URLs in the sig and honestly, I´m not very familiar with vB yet, so, the fastest way to get rid of that annoying intent of spam, was to turn off the sigs altogether. But yes… I agree that users are the real “owners†of a forum, and they should have the option to tell the community as much as they want about themselves, including their own websites. So… please feel free to go back and include your sig file in your profile. See you there! Pura Vida, Andres
Sig added, thanks. As far as controlling sigs, you could limit them to a certain number of lines, not allow images, and limit the number of links etc. I'm not sure how using VB, but I'm sure Shawn does. (hows that for passing the buck).
Hello people, I have added a gradient to the green in the background. I guess this way I please both, the ones who prefer the dark colors and the ones who voted for the lighter tones. I also added a new feature in the NavBar and in the User Control Panel that allows registered members to send an email to invite friends to join the forums. This feature will be more useful soon, because all the members registered through this system are automatically added to the list of referred members of the inviting member. Which is good, as my technical partner is working on a system of AdSense shared revenue, similar to the one used by Digital Point. With this system the members will be given the possibility of including in their Control Panel Options their AdSense client ID, which will be used 30% of the time when a thread started by them is viewed, in the Google 468 x 60 banned ads served under the first thread of every page. Here is where the Invite a Friend tool becomes useful, as the percentage of ads credited to the thread starter will be increased 1% for every 3 registered members referred by him or her, and that have a minimum of 10 posts each. This might represent a nice income at the end of the month, as MANY Costa Rica advertisers use Google AdWords to promote their businesses. You can check this by using the Google AdSense Sandbox Tool provided by Digital Point. And you know how good are for AdSense publishers the highly competitive markets, with lots of advertisers. I´ll post an update as soon as the system is ready. Thank you all people again for your suggestions. Pura Vida .
I think everyone has mentioned some great advise... Can you remove the sedo link on the home page? Only suggestion... keep it clean.