kay, a few things:
1. takes forever to load. dunno if that's a coding issue or a pb issue, but you should look into it [esp if it's a coding issue.]
2. i wouldn't say it's bright or blinding so much as
busy. you've got rainbow stripes as your background, and a different shade of rainbow stars as your banner & gradients. one thing i see many new designers do [and i did it myself], is put too much in their design -- whether it be too much colour, too much texture, or too many sparkly effects. =3 i've never worked with a 'rainbow' colour scheme, but if you really want to do it, why don't you play off it?
all i see at the moment is a bunch of colour and shape smacked on gray boards. it may be busy-looking, but at the same time, it's aesthetically... well... boring. =X there's too much going on in the way of colour, and definitely shape, yet at the same time, because it's so chaotic there's nothing holding the design together. there's no unifying factor.
if you're going to use the rainbow scheme, pick EITHER the stripes, or the stars. not both. when creating a banner, make sure you have a focal point, something to draw the person's eye to the name of your forum. don't just pick pretty shapes and a barrage of colour and splash it on the banner, then stick text on it. =P i presume this is going to be a design forum. imo, just having text on a banner isn't really... reflective of someone wanting to focus on design.
from my limited experience [i've only been doing this for five years, which is play time compared to some of the veterans around here, and i've only been doing it well for the past year or two] - if you want to focus your forum on design, you have to think of these things:
1. streamlining - while design forums may use a lot of technique & coding in their board design, everything is always organised, and efficient-looking. i have yet to meet and experienced designer who would join a forum that lacks any streamlining. take
studio zero and
slightly Insane for instance. everything's tied up in a nice neat package. i'm not saying you can't be original in your design, i'm saying that it should just be a little more cohesive.
2. competition - there's a ton of people starting design forums. a lot of them are just for people who mostly make sigs & avatars, but not really practiced in forum design. those are two very different things. every once in a while though, you get some amazing design forums, like SSD, or slightly Insane. you need to show people, if you're a design forum, that you can compete with heavy hitters like these. ;] yeah, it's about content, to an extent -- but first impressions play a heavy role [especially design forums]. i mean, you wouldn't join a "gardening" forum if their design looked like they had nothing to do with gardening, right?
3. technique - exhibit technique when working on your site's design. some basic techniques are:
a. banner composition - have a focal point [generally your site's name]. make sure that the
banner is indicative of what kind of site you have, and not just a name stuck on a banner. :3
b. colour scheme - many people have a hard time with this. i generally use the 'main' colour of my banner as the 'main' colour of my forum. then i pull minor colours to accentuate my forum. eg:
this banner. The main colour here is the light beige. i used that colour for my boards. then i pulled the dark blues for my category colours, the reds for my links, and the random instances of greenish colour for text. this is what i mean about being cohesive. ;] something that pulls it all together, in this case, the banner.
hope this helps. =3 of course, this is all my opinion so feel free to disregard.
I was simply taking your opinion and sharing it 
