Newbie "Limps" through her First Board Design!

LOL -

Hi there. I have spent the past several weeks (non stop) working on my very first forum. It is called Show Dog Alliance and you can see it at Show Dog Alliance (http://www.ShowDogAlliance.com).

I do love the look - with custom header, and the colors thanks to a skin from vB Skins. It has been a challenge, but it is up, thanks to all of the stupid questions I have asked in ALL of the message forums for VB! I have several other things I would like to do, but the board features vBadvanced, VB Upload for members to share photos -- although I do have some BB coding questions, which I can't seem to get answers about, possibly I will ask here... and also I have (with much great help and support from the designer) VB Classifieds (I highly reccomend).

I would love any input and feedback - is there anything I am missing for an interactive forum?

I will ask my BB Code question in another post - thanks! roro

Super site. Great design. Pleasing colors, Easy to navigate. Great job.

Minor points. What goes on when you click the dog photos on the vbadvanced home page (i.e. Wolfhound). Pics too small. I sent you a PM on your board to show you what I mean.

The pics on the header? I don't think they are too small at all. However, if you're going to have them linked to the forum, really only one of them should be linked. As it is, people will have the illusion that each pic should take them somwhere different on the site. Now if you linked the middle pic to a chatroom and the one on the end to a photo album - you'd have something unique there :yes:

Another thing that might make it more of a "dog" site is to have paw prints for the forum status icons rather than the flowers.

There are a couple of things that I would do to improve the overall look on the forumhome, such as separate the categories and bring the footer strip all the way to the bottom of the page.

However, overall, I think you did a very good job! Keep up the good work.

The pics on the header? I don't think they are too small at all. However, if you're going to have them linked to the forum, really only one of them should be linked. As it is, people will have the illusion that each pic should take them somwhere different on the site. Now if you linked the middle pic to a chatroom and the one on the end to a photo album - you'd have something unique there :yes:

Another thing that might make it more of a "dog" site is to have paw prints for the forum status icons rather than the flowers.

There are a couple of things that I would do to improve the overall look on the forumhome, such as separate the categories and bring the footer strip all the way to the bottom of the page.

However, overall, I think you did a very good job! Keep up the good work.

:) Thanks for the compliments -- I did not even realize the header was linked! Gosh, I need to figure that one out now... Lol. I think you are right about seperating the categories -- It would make it more pleasing and not so cluttered. I had considered taking some of the forum topics out until the board grows, but decided against it for now - as there are really some things that have to be there...

Cheers!

roro

Here's the mod I use for separating the cats - http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=123530

It's a good thing to link the header image, so don't think you have to remove it.