My first board and I dont know perl/cgi.

Most of this is the result of your patient help.

Suggestions?

http://www.thedarkwatch.com

and as with everything in life, this is only the finished product if I die tonight

Was kinda hoping for some positive feedback

Unusual choice of colors For the most part they work well. I'd choose one color for the buttons tho, some are dark blue/white text, some are black/white text. For your site you'd do well with the black most likely (Don't forget your top/de-top buttons).

Your greens are nice, but you've got quite a few different shades between the header graphic, the table backgrounds, the topic folders, the table cell backgrounds, etc... make the number of shades as few as possible.. 2 or 3 at the most

Tacks is better at the colors, maybe he'll have time to check it out

The black buttons on the forum summary are a little out of place with the text link next to it. Text links all across would probably be better

Your 80kb avatar took quite a while to dl on my 33k modem, not sure what access your members have, but if avatars are large like that, it'll make it difficult for dial-up users and your bandwidth will be going through the roof

Post a link when you have more work done, I'll check it out

For the most part, I agree with what Allen said. I think you are off to a fine start.

You really should look at using topic/poll buttons that compliment your other colors.

The green for your table headers is a nice flat color that is pleasing on the eyes, however, it doesn't match the green in the buttons under your header image. You might want to see whether changing the table headers to match is too loud or not. The green on your lightbulbs/folder should also compliment your overall scheme.

Speaking of the header image, it is quite large, and fixed, which can present problems for people running at different resolutions....either stretching the screen or leaving a gap.

The red doesn't bother me, as it is a muted tone, and there isn't too much of it.

In term of your forums. I'm surprised to see that you have number of topics/posts turned off. With that it is difficult for the user to see which forums are active.

You also should move your closed/private forums to the bottom. A visitor is likely to be frustrated if the first few links they click are closed doors. Although this may work for your particular members.

Some message icons should be replace with ones better aliased for dark background.

Your timestamp and quote backgrounds are a bit out of place with the other colors.

Ok I finished making all the buttons, and pared the colors down to 3 or 4. The banner is a work in progress (the artist: http://www.justinnitz.com/). Ill ask him to turn it into a vector graphic when its done.

Private forums are at the bottom. And there are none "off", some are read only, or should be

Ill lose the avatar , almost all of our members are fat pipe, but prolly not the visitors.

(sigh) constant improvement

One thing that bugs me, In the posts, after the 'message' button there seems to be an addition space (&nbsp). Where can I get to that?

thanks for the feedback !!

Nice start, the colors are okay. Not too hard on the eyes I guess.

Took a while to load full on my 56k here though.

Your folder icons and rating stars are still a bit too bright for the rest of the scheme.

Also, your profile/email/pm, etc buttons are pretty wide, which is causing them to wrap to the next row. You might want to consider either using a narrower graphic image, or if you want the text buttons, move them off to the side or something. Make sure to use posting icons that alias well with a dark background.

The additional space is there by design, to seperate the user buttons from edit. If you want to remove the space, you'll have to edit the files.

Im ok with editing the files Ummm which files? I know Im looking for but not sure which file. But perhaps I can down-size them tonight first to see how that goes.

The rating icons (slaps head) forgot about those.

And im looking to find/make better folder icons too.

Hey, it's looking much better

You do make your members jump through a few hoops to find the forums tho Once you get the forums looking right, work on the navigation and co-ordinating the colors on the rest of the site

Allen, I guess I am not understanding 'hoops'. I certianly want to make the site as intuitive as possible. What are you suggesting as far as navigation?

Ahh I understand now!! there is a DHTML welcome and News flash page. If you look at the source code on it you will see there is a type-o. The link at the top correctly points to *.cgi, but the 'skip intro' link near the bottom points to the old site still. I was made aware of that today. What I need ia a good portal system like WebApp, that works on a win2k server. I like the look and feel, but havent bothered to learn shtml yet.

BTW everyone is exteamly happy with the suggestions you guys have made. thanks

Here are the so called hoops

1. Have to endure through your intro...I skipped

2. You have a flash menu on the left side...I clicked forums

3. I am brought to the board rules page...didn't read the rules, but clicked on 'I agree'

4. Opens up 'BB.htm' which uses a frame to load the UBB.

5. The top frame throws an error, but ignoring the error we can at least see the UBB underneath.

6. You can play on the ubb, but you still have the bad frameset on top.

In terms of the ubb itself. Your light colored text is difficult to read with the gradiants.

Also I would show the # of posts for the forums, but that is a personal preference.

I also would change your copyright background on the bottom. The black background is out of place.

Actually, the main page (after you skip intro) makes my IE stop responding :rolleyes:

but if you wait 3 secs for the flash to end, it redirects you to the forum automatically

All should be ok now except the font color and the ranking pips. Still experimenting there.

Oh and the prototype of the banner is a bit too wide, but that will be fixed.

header tip:

place the banner as the image cell background, in a 100% table, so that it displays in full if you have a larger monitor, but doesnt stretch the screen if you dont.

header tip 2:

if you follow that, make sure you place a transparent gif image in the foregraound of the table, so that you see the background

In the tbody of the header, I placed a table within the first td, width=95% and centered. That gave me some seperation that I like too

thanks for the clue

OK some time has passed. Some tweaks have been applied. The next ones will be compact headers and seperated catagories. I would really like to do transparent cells, but can I get some input on where I am now with this thing?

thanks