Please Critique My Site

lakitu · 28 Aug 2012 at 19:15

I have pretty much finished setting up my watch enthusiast forum and would appreciate some fresh eyes!

I would like to say that I will be changing the 'Friends' Section on the right to make it more attractive so if you can ignore that. What does everyone think about the design, colour scheme etc?

Let me know what you all think and thank you!

Calibre 24

AHarvey · 28 Aug 2012 at 19:24

colours work well, I can't see anything obvious that annoys me.

When I first logged on the front page looked a little cramped with the adverts down the side but the forums use the entire width so that's fine. Shame its a fixed width, my be a pain when people want to post some hi-res photos of their watches. I'm on a 24inch screen and half the screen is unused

lakitu · 28 Aug 2012 at 19:48

AHarvey said:
colours work well, I can't see anything obvious that annoys me.

When I first logged on the front page looked a little cramped with the adverts down the side but the forums use the entire width so that's fine. Shame its a fixed width, my be a pain when people want to post some hi-res photos of their watches. I'm on a 24inch screen and half the screen is unused

Good point! I was thinking about limiting the size of the images so this wouldn't be a problem. I think I prefere fixed width myself but I can easily change.

craptakular · 28 Aug 2012 at 20:07

What software is that running?

JonnyGLC · 28 Aug 2012 at 20:35

It's even more daft on a 27" screen

Calibre 24 · 28 Aug 2012 at 20:37

Crumbs, that does look a little daft. Well I will definitely consider changing this. I wonder what percentage of people have a display +24"

Maccy · 28 Aug 2012 at 21:33

Why are you not posting from the same account?

Ekim · 28 Aug 2012 at 21:56

Uh oh!

lakitu · 29 Aug 2012 at 07:02

Oxy said:
What software is that running?

It's running Vbulletin 4. I've never used any forum software before but I'm happy with it so far. Would you recommend anything else?

lakitu · 29 Aug 2012 at 07:04

Maccy said:
Why are you not posting from the same account?

Thank you for that Maccy! I had forgot I created that, hence there being zero posts apart from the one you created.

Craig R · 29 Aug 2012 at 09:46

lakitu said:
Good point! I was thinking about limiting the size of the images so this wouldn't be a problem. I think I prefere fixed width myself but I can easily change.

I prefer fixed width too. Reading lines of text the width of a 1920 pixel screen is a pain in the hoop. Narrower columns of text are more readable.

You can always add a jquery plugin to open full-size images, such as lightbox.

Maccy · 29 Aug 2012 at 14:27

lakitu said:
Thank you for that Maccy! I had forgot I created that, hence there being zero posts apart from the one you created.

I'm going to nuke it, FYI dupe accounts aren't permitted. I would hope that you should already know that, being a forum owner

lakitu · 29 Aug 2012 at 16:50

Craig R said:
I prefer fixed width too. Reading lines of text the width of a 1920 pixel screen is a pain in the hoop. Narrower columns of text are more readable.

You can always add a jquery plugin to open full-size images, such as lightbox.

Ah thank you I'll look in to that! Anyone else have any suggestions?

Sir SpankalotUK · 29 Aug 2012 at 17:22

The threads/posts column is too narrow to fit everything in nicely.

I would also look at different icons for the forums, the brand ones should be simple enough.

I have never been a fan of vb, think the styling mechanism sucks big time, just give me a css file any day of the week. I prefer mybb myself and its free.

lakitu · 1 Sep 2012 at 11:05

What are your thoughts on the t-shirt offer I have started? (the blue banner on the right) Do you like the offer?

Frankly I'm not sure if it's a great idea or ridiculous.

FRAGMAYO · 1 Sep 2012 at 23:13

its not a bad site, looks a bit plain

ivce never used VB before but i have used simpla machines and PHPBB

and i was more than happy with both of them

Good luck with you forum

Van Hellseek · 2 Sep 2012 at 05:31

Tbh, that's a very basic/vanilla vBulletin installation with a theme which makes me want to navigate away from it (searing red text on a light background...). Also the level of advertising & affiliate-pimping is undesirable.

lakitu said:
What are your thoughts on the t-shirt offer I have started? (the blue banner on the right) Do you like the offer?

Frankly I'm not sure if it's a great idea or ridiculous.

Wouldn't sway my decision to join/post at all. I have plenty of T-Shirts and don't need one with unknown branding on it.

FRAGMAYO · 2 Sep 2012 at 10:25

Van Hellseek said:
Tbh, that's a very basic/vanilla vBulletin installation with a theme which makes me want to navigate away from it (searing red text on a light background...). Also the level of advertising & affiliate-pimping is undesirable.

Wouldn't sway my decision to join/post at all. I have plenty of T-Shirts and don't need one with unknown branding on it.

I fully agree with this guy

Add some banners and graphics and change the theme.

And as said way to many ads that are not very organized

michaelp · 3 Sep 2012 at 19:10

2 sections for friends of Calibre 24? Otherwise things are looking good on my laptop screen. I quite like the design of the forum overall though

sw1ft · 4 Sep 2012 at 10:20

There are a couple of really annoying hidden links, the themes select in the bottom left for example.

Also, the menu items don't have a selected state, although the hover state matches the forum link which makes it look and feel like they should have one.

In the FAQs the text is white on a light grey, making it hard to read, the hover state is black text which is nicer but on hover it's a bit redundant. It's also completely off style.

in fact, .blockrow a {} seems to be setting the font colour to #E6E6E6, overiding body a{} which is setting it to a rather fetching #C90000