WELCOME EARTHLINGS

[Aenwyn]

Jul 23, 2024 16:50:10 GMT -8 peekabooicu said:

Jul 23, 2024 12:20:40 GMT -8 Aenwyn said:

I think you could benefit from a less electric blue background, or even a background with a subtle repeat pattern to make it look less like one big block of blue. A lighter, more neutral blue is definitely easier on the eyes in my opinion.

thank you for your response. 
I will look into that . Thank you.

re-edit... Thank you Aenwyn .... I got a blue background kind of electric. I think that did the trick.
I was going to a blue background with blue categories to make it a "transparent" theme going... lol... but the background made it a bit better.
THANKS!

I took a look, that's definitely much more pleasant on the eyes! I like the pattern of the background. All the best of luck!

[peekabooicu]

Jul 23, 2024 18:23:40 GMT -8 Aenwyn said:

Jul 23, 2024 16:50:10 GMT -8 peekabooicu said:

thank you for your response. 
I will look into that . Thank you.

re-edit... Thank you Aenwyn .... I got a blue background kind of electric. I think that did the trick.
I was going to a blue background with blue categories to make it a "transparent" theme going... lol... but the background made it a bit better.
THANKS!

I took a look, that's definitely much more pleasant on the eyes! I like the pattern of the background. All the best of luck!

thank you so much!

[peekabooicu]

bump

[peekabooicu]

bump

[peekabooicu]

bump

[peekabooicu]

bump

[peekabooicu]

bump

[peekabooicu]

bump

[peekabooicu]

bump

[peekabooicu]

bump

[peekabooicu]

bump

[Kami]

Aesthetically, I tend to recommend folks stay away from saturated colours when it comes to any background that may have text on it. Even if there's nothing the matter medically with a person, a large amount of saturated colours that you look at for a long time will cause eye strain. I presume you want people to spend a lot of time on the forum, so if that's the case, I would recommend a more desaturated blue. I've made a thing below to show you the difference between having something saturated versus not.

this is what you have

this is desaturated

I also recommend setting your background image to fixed instead of "scroll"; since the pattern is repeating, the background doesn't need to move with the rest of the content.

Content is honestly something that isn't for me. That doesn't mean it's bad, I'm just not your target audience — general chatting forums have always been popular, but I tend to prefer more singularly-focused forum communities, like RP forums or art forums, etc. I will say that you look to be active on your forum, which is great!

And lastly, the organisation of the forum is a little confusing to me, the boards seem to all be in one category, rather than broken up into different buckets of topics. Breaking stuff up isn't a hard requirement to be successful as a forum or anything, but it might make the barrier for entry / new membership lower if people can quickly find the boards that interest them since they're grouped together in a clear fashion based on the overarching topics (eg: a category for Current Events could be used to group together the Celeb news board and the 21st century board). If you don't want to have more categories, that's totally okay, but i maybe would then suggest rearranging the order of the boards so that similarly themed boards are grouped together. In the above example, the celeb board and the 21s century board are nearly the entire length of the forum apart.

Overall, I think you have a good start, and I think it will be appealing to your target audience. The only real considerations are the background scrolling, saturated blue text backgrounds, and maybe how the boards themselves are grouped together (but this last one is definitely a personal preference thing).

Hope that was helpful, good luck!

[peekabooicu]

Hello Kami ,
I see the blue you are referring to.. I have to agree... It is much better with a darker blue, thanks for that tip!

I have made several forums in the past and none of them gave me any members to join. lol. oh well... but at least this one I can just be ME and hope to have the same mind like folks that are like me.
I am very active on my forum. I try to think of things that people might be able to relate and want to just chat and or share their ideas and their opinions.
I know there are hundreds of forums similar to mine but I just feel like I do better with a simple forum for everyday people. If that makes sense.

Yes the organized category thing... I did that on purpose.. I put my threads in alphabetical order from A-Z......however....

I do see your point. I did have them in their own category a few weeks ago and took it down, but I thought it made my forum too " long and crashy" if that even makes sense?
But I do see your point.

Thank you for your kind words and helpful tips. Much obliged! I have taken your words to heart and hopefully it looks much better and more organized!

PS. the background is fixed not scroll... thats strange that my background on your end is not fixed and scrolling??? weird.

[Kami]

Aug 22, 2024 18:24:06 GMT -8 peekabooicu said:

Hello Kami ,
I see the blue you are referring to.. I have to agree... It is much better with a darker blue, thanks for that tip!

Of course! Glad it was useful.

Aug 22, 2024 18:24:06 GMT -8 peekabooicu said:

but I thought it made my forum too " long and crashy" if that even makes sense?

I understand where you're coming from, but for what it's worth, this shouldn't be a concern for you anymore. A "long" website is no longer synonymous with being "crashy" — provided that you take care to make sure to have quality content on your site.

I see you broke things down and grouped boards together, I think this looks much easier to navigate and will allow members and guests to quickly find their areas of interests.

Aug 22, 2024 18:24:06 GMT -8 peekabooicu said:

PS. the background is fixed not scroll... thats strange that my background on your end is not fixed and scrolling??? weird.

This was my bad — I initially looked at the forum on my phone through desktop mode, but looks like that makes the forum background look like it's scrolling when it isn't. It doesn't scroll at all on desktop proper. Sorry about that! :)

[peekabooicu]

Aug 23, 2024 8:13:04 GMT -8 Kami said:

Aug 22, 2024 18:24:06 GMT -8 peekabooicu said:

Hello Kami ,
I see the blue you are referring to.. I have to agree... It is much better with a darker blue, thanks for that tip!

Of course! Glad it was useful.

Aug 22, 2024 18:24:06 GMT -8 peekabooicu said:

but I thought it made my forum too " long and crashy" if that even makes sense?

I understand where you're coming from, but for what it's worth, this shouldn't be a concern for you anymore. A "long" website is no longer synonymous with being "crashy" — provided that you take care to make sure to have quality content on your site.

I see you broke things down and grouped boards together, I think this looks much easier to navigate and will allow members and guests to quickly find their areas of interests.

Aug 22, 2024 18:24:06 GMT -8 peekabooicu said:

PS. the background is fixed not scroll... thats strange that my background on your end  your fault...is not fixed and scrolling??? weird.

This was my bad — I initially looked at the forum on my phone through desktop mode, but looks like that makes the forum background look like it's scrolling when it isn't. It doesn't scroll at all on desktop proper. Sorry about that!

Its okay...not your fault. it happens. and thank you again for taking the time to check out my forum and give me some pros and cons. Much appreciated!