I've had my forum for a little over a month now and I'm seeing a trend forming...I'm the only girl. A few girls joined but they don't stay. So my question is how I can get more girls interested in my forum?
stirringthemyth.freeforums.net/Wow, that's a good question. I looked at your site and I shouldn't think the theme is turning girls away although if you have another theme that you think might be more "girly" you could always test that theory and make it your default for a while.
You may want to add a introduce yourself board and when you see any new member, especially what appears to be a girl, make a welcome thread for them and make sure you respond right away to them if they post.
A couple things regarding your theme, that does bother me and since I'm a girl, maybe other girls are bothered by it too? (Grasping here)
The red (board and thread titles) against the black is a bit hard on the eyes and it doesn't really match anything else on your forum. The background has a lot of colors, none of them being red, to pick from. There are blues, yellows, greens that might work better.
Now I love someone who is daring with their background but sometimes it is a bit to "busy" or too much. One thing you might want to try is just putting a transparent or even solid background color so it just goes behind and around the forum body and banner, just to tone down the "busy-ness".
You could test the bold below to see if you like it by just adding it to the bottom of your style sheet: (Admin> Themes> Advanced Styles & CSS> Style Sheet>)
/* Background color around forum */
#wrapper{background: rgba(205, 190, 112, .8); padding: 20px;
}
The above is using rgb colors rather than hexadecimal colors. I posted a link to covert your hex color to rgb. The hex numbers are the first 3 numbers(205, 190, 112,). The last number (.8) is for how transparent you want it. Lower is more transparent, higher more opaque.
www.yellowpipe.com/yis/tools/hex-to-rgb/color-converter.php
Curious about web design for women I did a search and did find this site kind of interesting. (Not my site and do not know the person who owns that site)
blog.templatemonster.com/2012/07/26/web-design-by-gender-women/
Since they mentioned females like curved things you could add a curve to that border?
/* Background color around forum */
#wrapper{background: rgba(205, 190, 112, .8); padding: 20px;moz-border-radius: 15px;
border-radius: 15px;
}
Another thought to make that background not be so distracting would be to set it so it doesn't scroll with the forum. You can do that by going to your
Themes and Visual Editor, click on background and set it to "fixed".
You posted a very interesting question and I wish I had a definitive answer. Before I forget, we do have rules regarding the title of your thread. Can you change that to the name of your forum or the genre of your forum. Thanks.
