Please review www.nareponline.com/portal

A little on the boring side, but then so is Real Estate.

Goods:
The front page is simple and direct. Straight to the point. Very good.
This trend continues, most pages state their purpose clearly.
Clean and unobtrusive layout throughout the site, means the eyes can find content easily.

Bads:
There is no link to download the documents on your documents page.
The forums style doesn't fit in with the other pages.
Most pages are VERY boring. This site is crying out for some excitement, colour and attraction.
Most pages have very little content. Two documents doesn't justify a whole page. Nor does 1 paragraph as your mission statement.

On further revision I've noticed you're using a standard CMS. This, in my opinion, is always a very bad move when creating a website, for numerous reasons.

To summarize, I'd advize adding some images, more content and a splash of colour, but most importantly, get rid of the CMS and design your own website.

I like your simple layout, especially that the site appears more like a basic html page than joomla! actually... The problem I first noticed is that it uses too man white space... Simple is good, but no design flair is worst...

Im not saying though that its a bad design but you could do better... Overall this type of site works best for your clientelle, but I do suggest you add some splashes here and there to make an impact... also if you could just pump-up the font sizes a little...

You also havent assigned an icon for the site, it still uses the joomla! icon on the bar, you could change this too...

On your mission statements, bullets in firefox has no edge padding which makes it look constricted, your FORUM doesnt match the site design... why not integrate it with the site design... the tag at the bottom of your code of ethics page doesnt fill the entire width, your organizining documents page should contain excerpts from inside the actual documents or a summary; Giving just an icon for download is too unprofessional in my opinion.

Again the join Narep page is a membership info page, too short to be on a page, this would work if you added some images I guess if you cant add content. Your Contact page could use some colors too...

I understand that its under construction, so you might take these points and make necessary changes for the better...

Thanks for the input so far. I am working to add some color and features to the site so it will be more appealing.

I'd like to ask about CMS systems and the comment that they may be a bad way to go. Why is this? Does it cause a problem down the road?

Same as what the others said before, fairly dull and a lot of whitespace. You need way more content on the page but I guess you will get that as you develop it. The colours and general design are good. I guess they came with the CMS package. Whether they did or not they work. Borders, lines, colours etc I like.

Photos will liven it up. You need to make the logo a bit bigger I think and fill out the empty white space at the top. It sounds like an organisation that will have some money behind it and it needs to look professional so you should spend a bit on it if you can.

In my experience CMS systems are inflexible and very slow and cumbersome to work with. Many other web designers will feel the same. But that is a web professional's point of view and of course we value creative and technical flexibility very highly. But if you don't have the necessary skills and don't have money to pay someone who has, then CMS systems can be a practical solution, in my opinion. But there will come a time when you grow out of it.

Blue