Politely asking for a review - iwebforums.com

Looks like you now how to handle Photoshop in a good way. IMHO I think it has been designed very well, with eye for detail.

There's only one minor thing... I think the header doesn't fit to the rest of the page at all.

But that might become a really minor thing when you introduce themes I guess.

Oh I'm sorry...

I didn't mean 'fit' in a lay out way, but more in a color scheme way. 'Match' would have been a better term I guess.

What I was trying to say is that the header is kind of dark, while the rest of the page is bright and clean. They don't match IMHO.

Your forum looks great!

Great design, good navigation, well orgnized

8/10

Very slow to load on dial-up.

I hate dial up

So does about 40% of the UK who are still using it! All the more reason to design with that in mind.

Saying that I coul;dn't find anything I didn't like about the iste. Excellent strong header and a really good feel to it... Good job!

I like the header and the graphics but I don't like the forum organization. It seems like I'm always saying the same thing when people post forum sites. The first problem is too many forums. Do you really need four separate forums about buying and selling sites and ads? Why not just have one forum for all of it? There are four forums right there taking up space on the front page and not attracting discussion.

In the marketing section you've got a similar problem - only one forum for pay per click advertising. Is there really all that much discussion about that particular toipic? Why not widen it to all issues of marketing?

The other problem is that the entire top section of the forums are useless crap. Announcements? NOthing to talk about there? Rules? Where's my sleepy smile when I need it. And from the description that "announcements" forum isn't really announcmeents, it's more akin to what we call "forum specific discussion".

There is also no forum allocated for general discussion. What happens when people have a question about something that doesn't fit into any of the other cateogries? We call that "Webmaster's Corner" here at TWF (but you could call it whatever you want). I think it's also important to have an off topic chat area. That generally attracts a lot of posting activity. Upon closer examination it looks like this is your "Chit Chat - Intros" forum, but I just took that to be Introducitons.

Another problem I see here is that you've put a lot of space between the forum sections. It takes alot of scrolling to get to the section where the actual discussion is.

Now that I'm looking closer at the header I'm noticing some problems. Like the arrows that are pointing off to the left edge of the screen. Arrows should always point inwards. There's another one beside the logo that is pointing up to the right corner of the screen. I also think it woudl be beter if that hard drive image was taken out. It seems sort of out of place there. A lot of the stuff in that graphic seem almost randomly placed. Another problem is that it's really wide, forcing horizontal scrolling with a window width of 850px or so (I keep my windows taskbar on the right side, with my Opera sidebar on the left so it makes a narrower browser window. I'm sure I'm not the only one who does something like this).

Overall this is a nice looking forum but I'm just not feeling the urge to jump in and paritcipate.

Looks high tech but loads slow. I think I'm having the same problem with my site IPS

The graphics are cool, but maybe it's just a little to much bling-bling.

By the way is this site a template found on the web?

Goldmine

The design impressed me. But I found a small issue: It is still in 2004, why your site says "Copyright 2005-2006".

I like the layout and overall look.

It appears that you have done everything correct. .

Well, firstly let me say that overall, I think that your site is great.
Let's go from the top and work down.
I think that the title, ie 'iwebforums.com' perhaps needs to be a bit bigger.
And i can hardly read In the top left-hand corner.
Not only do I think those arrows are random, but I am puzzled as to why they link to the home page and not the title.
With a blue/orange header I would like to expect the same throughout.
Now, I know they're adverts and they make you money, but having them first and navigation second doesn't look good for your priorities.
You MAY have to register? Well either you do or you dont.
It looks bad when hardly any of the moderator spaces are filled. If you don't have many moderators, fine, but delete the column. (If you want an extra mod, I'm always available )
Rest of page has nice, clean look to it.
Too many forums
As the 'What's going on' section tells me that perhaps there's not alot going on, move it to the right-hand navigation column or delete it completely so the gaps don't look as big.
you sound like a dude on ur own.
so how come an AR solutions company?
Despite my constructive criticism, the point listed are only minor, hence overall mark 78%
PS. Do you mind me asking how you promoted the site?

I hope to set the the menu font as bold or set the font size a little larger. They are hard to read when my screen resolution is high. Usually, menus are more important and clicked often. Again, the logo iwebForums.com on top is too small to impress the visitors.