Wesite Creation

[Spook]

So, I was kind of playing around with making a forum site like VT. How does it look? :P

http://darkdiaries.forumotion.com/

[Bob_]

Not bad, cool that it has a mobile site. Not to sound mean, but a little un-creative. It seems like a pretty decent little forum, and that's about it.

[Syvelocin]

Don't know about that banner, but I dig the skin. Do know that your skin, though pretty, and your banner will be a major part of the attention-grabbing. You want it to appeal to the audience you're trying to attract. I've seen much worse as far as skins, but do know something pretty and slightly "girly" is going to attract exactly that, more girls than guys. When I choose a very bold colour for a skin, I make sure the rest of it is very simple instead. For instance, the forum I admin has a purple and grey skin currently, but the rest of it is very elegant though plain. Even the banner, while I had a third party design it for me in photoshop, is very simple and blends with the skin.

Though I'm not familiar with that forum provider. All my expertise comes from proboards. :3

There seems to be a few too many categories, it throws you off when you have to scroll down that far to get to the bottom of the page. You could easily merge the first four even. I'd say a decent four or even five boards per category at least. If you don't have enough for that, I'd think of modifying a category so it's a bit more general. You'll have the same number of boards but it'll look less choppy and cluttered. And some of the boards are a bit too specific, they could be merged with other ones and be a bit more active than they would be otherwise. For instance, I'd only have one "Kitchen" board, as well as the Games and the art forum is a bit too specific as well. Not to model it off VT, because that's the incorrect thing to do, but VT has overall a really good balance of this, nothing too specific but covers a wide range of topics. Unless your forum is about... electronics, to pick out something specific, I wouldn't make that many forums for it, you know? If you really need a specific forum for all that, I would make them as sub-forums (assuming your forum provider has that feature). Less clutter.

[Spook]

Alright, thanks for the critique. I'll work on it some more. :)

EDIT: Worked on narrowing down the forums. It looks a bit better. :D

[Dark Vamp]

I like your choice of colors. :)

[Riley6606]

Did u actually write out the script and the encoding or is it one of those Built-ur-own site websites...cause it kinda looks like one. Try learning javascrit or HTML

[canadaski]

I've had quite a few internet businesses over the years, some successful and some not so much but they were a learning experience.;)

I like your site although I would suggest signing up for a web hosting account and registering a TLD (top level domain such as .com,.net,.org etc). You can then install a PHP (hypertext preprocessor) script on your web server that will provide you the same funtions and more. A great script to start off with is SMF.

The reason why you should host the site independently is that the company hosting and administering your site has the ability to do whatever they want to your site. Essentially, they own it and it's contents. I would suggest sending them an email and asking whether or not you have access to the user database in order to migrate it over to other forum software later.

I do like the look of it, you did a pretty good job on the header image. Is the rest of the template stock?


If you have any questions about website admin or ebusiness then feel free to send me a message as it's my hobby and job. I won't be able to answer until i get my post count up to 101 though.

[Syvelocin]

Alright, thanks for the critique. I'll work on it some more. :)

EDIT: Worked on narrowing down the forums. It looks a bit better. :D

Much cleaner, kudos.

[Jess]

I really like it (: But personally I would not use a free forum host. but that's just my opinion