Review Request; ProgramForum.Com

Hi, TalkingWorld, thanks for taking the time to provide some good insight into other people's work here!

A forum is a forum is a forum for the most part, but some suggestions may make improvements in the layout:

1. Program Forum User Name Remember Me? <-- this is very tall, and could be shorter, moving the main information higher, by putting the form on one line instead of multiple.

2. Forums never really make sense until you've been there for awhile, but with all the fonts the same size, it's even harder to get through the "noise" of all that text to the what each section is.

3. It looks like a generic forum. The logo and branding is weak -- by which I mean it looks like a forum, and could be any default forum on any topics if you greek it (make the content of the words hidden). If you look at the main page here with the TWF Classic skin, you see the forum titles are larger than the descriptions, though they are in one cell. If you use the TWF Experimental skin, the forum titles are larger and isolated, which gives the user the ability to skip through the titles more quickly. They are also a different colour. (you can change the skin in the Edit Options section of the Control Panel, for those who are curious.)

I haven't looked deeper than the main page because you're using forum software and there really aren't any surprises there.

it's another forum!

it's all blue and grey

it works but yawn!

I agree with the others here. Looks like a forum. Blue. Yawn.

I think one thing you should do is try to reduce the number of forums. This will do a few things - it'll combine your post counts so it'll look like you have more posts than you do. Nobody wants to join a dead forum, right? It will also make it easier for people to see what you offer at a quick glance and decide whether or not they want to join. Personally, I prefer small forums because it means less clicking, as long as topics are still organized rationally. There's a fine balance there, but definitely reduce your scope a bit as you get going. Advertising and "related topics" aren't the focus of your forums so dont' give them so much space.

Also move your administrative forums down to the bottom. You can leave general chat at the top, since it might attract people, but here the first forums they see are the most boring. That's not going to do much to entice people in.

I Agree. As much as I am into forum sites, (I run one) there seems to be WAAAAYYY to many forums on the page, there's nothing I hate more than having to scroll for an hour jsut to see the whole page..