Critique me www.thegayforums.com

http://www.thegayforums.com

This looks pretty good. The logo and colour scheme look good and you've got a good basic layout going.

I think the top part of the layout is a little text heavy. There are some images down with the reviews at the bottom but the fold area is mainly text. I would rearrange things a bit so you could fit in a photo or illustration of some sort. That would liven things up a lot.

The forums are a little odd looking to me but that's probably because I ha
ven't seen that forum software before. The page icons next to the forum listings look like they're stretched horizontally. I think it would be good to section of the two forum related topics at the bottom of the main section, as you've done with the reviews section.

The page titles need some work here. You should include the title of your site and a description with some keywords. This will help the user to know where they are and will give the search engines some good words to look at.

Thanks for your comments and suggestions Megan.

but I'm trying to figure out what you were reffering to with the sentence below.

Quote: "I think it would be good to section of the two forum related topics at the bottom of the main section, as you've done with the reviews section."

I like the feel of the site, its welcoming and airy. Maybe you could use a gradient effect for your titleboxes (the one in bright yellow) and I feel a problem with the positioning of the headlines I just cant put my finger on it.

Good Site...!

Thanks for the comments and suggestions demonhale. I love your avatar

I think the "headlines" might look better at the top of the main body rather than under the "welcome" part.

I'll have to try some gradients and see what I come up.

I looked at it hard enough but by anychance can you make a single bar for the headlines instead of repeating the bars... It will look mor organized and balanced... just put dividers on the actual news...

My Avatar is My site Icon/Identity, im glad you like it...

Heres a gradient image to help you out...

same scheme

Hello!

Uh oh - something wrong with the nav links at the top. Some are above, some in the middle and some below the double blue/grey line.

Maybe you shouldn't have underlines on the text in the Reviews section - one might mistake them for links (which I did...)

Again on the header/nav bar, on either end there are box things that show up in the middle of that double blue/grey line. Didn't know if that was designed or a layout prob

I like the yellow & grey, but not the shade of blue in the header. Maybe a slightly different shade?

There's a lot of space (equal to the height of the photo) in the first review between the heading and the review. Looks like the text is not wrapping around the graphic.

And in the Headlines, the middle one has the title wrapping which pushes down the text so it's not lined up with the other headline boxes on either side of it.

Have you protected your email address? Hope it's not out there in the clear or you'll be getting spam soon. I added some javascript thing that encrypts mine on the site. There are various ways I guess...

BTW - I'm on a Mac w/Safari

Good luck!
mdancy
tonydancy.com

First impression is woah.
I like the yellow/grey combination but not the blue/grey, the blue is to flat, to depressing which makes the black sink in rather than jump out. The blue used in the heading sections might be a better choice, and the gayforums which is currently black done in grey

You have two log in forms, yet the top one doesnt have the remember me option.

As your site is centered around teh forums I feel the front page just doesn't cut it. not to sure as to what to do here but I think it's the reviews that are causing the off set.

I think it,s pretty good! I just have one suggestion... to me it seems a little crowded, maybe you could stagger the colors of the thread topics to break it up a little?? I don't know if it's needed, but I think it would be easier on my eyes!

Other than that, I like it!

Firstly on my res (1280x1024) there is a lot of white unnecessary space in articles, you could try to fix that up. As header, you might consider putting some imges of people, it gives site a bit more human kinda look. I like the color combinations, but I prefer sites that are in one way (horizontally or vertically) organised, but it's my opinion. I would recommend vertical type of centring, because it's much easier to do, particularly on ContentManagementSystems... I would recommend you the LDU CMS (neocrome.net).

I was wondering if someone could do me a favor and go to mylinks page and click on a couple of the google adsense links. I want to make sure its working and counting the clicks.

I dont have hardly any traffic on my site right now, otherwise I wouldn't be asking.

And hopefully its working and not displaying a Public Service Announcment when someone looks at it.

You do realise that it is against the rules to ask people to click on your links right?

Yes but It was only an attempt to see if it was working, but dont worry about it. I'll just wait for some of my traffic to click on something to see if its working.

I do have a question though. How does adsense pick the links, does it have to do with the words on the page that the ads are on? I think thats what I read but cant remember. I just added it last night, so I'm still learning this new feature.

I really dont think the content is an issue to anyone, or it shouldnt be anyways. This is a forum to gather feedback on design anyhow, not content. I find your site to be really nice, easy to navigate and well thought out. Good luck with it and take care.
Paul