[trickstar34]

So I am developing a forum that I hope to turn into a thriving community eventually. It's focus is on astronomy and outer space. I am 2 days into this project and I am using YetAnotherForum.NET for my forum software because I prefer ASP.NET for server-side programming and I did the design all myself (including editing the source files and themes of the software). I am only so far having an issue making the Like and G+ 1 buttons to display evenly on a line . It's fully functional and is open to new members because I have finished its current design. I am planning on adding a possible alien/UFO theme and a galaxy theme. Please tell me what you think of my design and code (also please rate it in the poll so I get a good idea of what you think). I am looking very forward to feedback and suggestions and if anybody has good ideas of how to draw in members and give it a more community feel, I am all ears. Please be 100% honest so I get a good idea of what I need to do.

The URL is:
http://www.stargazerforums.com/

This post has been edited by trickstar34: 08 July 2012 - 02:36 PM

[modi123_1]

Over all not bad - but then again it's just a reskinned forum theme, right?

A few things - clean up your images.. the background is awfully busy and reminds me of some crap geocities sites from back in '97.

The 'hot topic', 'new post', 'announcement', etc area needs a background because black text on that busy of a blue is hard to read.. and also the images are quite large..

Your main banner needs to be a link back to the start page.. nothing annoys me more when people don't use that convention.

I do not understand what the bottom area is all about - the one with the advertisement and the 'pillars of creation' nebula background. What is its function?

The "Welcome Guest! To enable all features please Login or Register. " bar is too long - it doesn't line up with the forum header or the rest of the bars...

I can't read the "Current time: 8:31:32 PM(UTC)." bit.

Over all I am unclear why I would pick this forum over say astronomy forum.net.

[trickstar34]

modi123_1, on 08 July 2012 - 08:34 PM, said:

Over all not bad - but then again it's just a reskinned forum theme, right?

Well the theme itself I just changed about 3 lines of the css file, the overall design was made prior to installing the forum, I made the site as HTML + CSS then once I bought the domain I installed the forum software and embedded it into my design and touched up those few lines of code from the theme file so things could be easier to see (all the background text was black so I changed it to shades of white).

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A few things - clean up your images.. the background is awfully busy and reminds me of some crap geocities sites from back in '97.

Which images? If your talking about the images from the forum, I'm planning on making my own to replace them, if your talking about my images which ones?

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The 'hot topic', 'new post', 'announcement', etc area needs a background because black text on that busy of a blue is hard to read.. and also the images are quite large..

Hmmm, I guess those were a different CSS class from the forum icons on the main page, I'm going to fix those up today.

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Your main banner needs to be a link back to the start page.. nothing annoys me more when people don't use that convention.

I'll do that today.

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I do not understand what the bottom area is all about - the one with the advertisement and the 'pillars of creation' nebula background. What is its function?

It's pretty much supposed to be a bottom navbar that will contain the Like, G+ and Follow on Twitter buttons for the site.

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The "Welcome Guest! To enable all features please Login or Register. " bar is too long - it doesn't line up with the forum header or the rest of the bars...

Didn't really notice that myself because I'm always logged in when I view the site lol. I'll see what I can do about that.

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I can't read the "Current time: 8:31:32 PM(UTC)." bit.

Would a brighter white help?

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Over all I am unclear why I would pick this forum over say astronomy forum.net.

Well my site is only 3 days old so I don't expect people to choose mine over any other ones as of now , and I wasn't even aware of that sites existence until now. I'll look into this and try to get some features that that site doesn't have and to me I think I have a better design scheme than they do , I am also planning on making multiple themes to compete with other sites. Thank you for your feedback because you've helped me notice issues I didn't see.

This post has been edited by trickstar34: 10 July 2012 - 08:36 AM

[anonymouscodder]

Despite the background and the banner (sorry, but they look pretty bad ) it seems ok.

I see that your forum is ASP.NET, may I ask which forum system is it? I rarely see (maybe never?) ASP.NET forums out there.

[modi123_1]

From the OP's op...

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I am 2 days into this project and I am using YetAnotherForum.NET

[Ryano121]

Also I noticed that the current time is completely wrong. Seems to be 6 hours away from the actual UTC time.