Opinions needed....

[Adaytay]

Hi folks :D Hope everyones' Sunday is good (or Monday, or Tuesday or...) :roll:

After a bit of a favour actually, wonder if some of you would be kind enough to go here: forum.adaytay.com , and tell me what you think. Be as cruel as you like.

It's my first EVER forum, and my first EVER website... the main site (www.adaytay.com) is still under construction, so I've been concentrating on getting the forum up and running.

I'm not trying to take ANYTHING away from ANY existing site out there. Especially this one, UtterAccess.com or Access-Programmers.co.uk - it's primarily (hopefully) going to be for my customers, and I've added a gaming forum in there too so it's a bit "different".

Please, pop over and let me know what you think,

Cheers,

Ad

[Richie(UK)]

Hi A,

I have to say that I like it - very pleasing to the eye.

Well done. :thumb

[Adaytay]

Rich,

Thank you! Means a heck of a lot coming from you - glad you like it. The main theme (phpXP2) is now complete, and although there are others available, I'm just in the process of making a couple of final "tweaks" to them.

I just hope it (the site) takes off... I know there are plenty of other great sites out there, just thought it would be nice to have "my own thing"... the idea is to really get myself established, because I've learnt so much and I think I should give some of that back to the user community - hence the forum!

Ad.

[Zack Barresse]

Hey Adaytay,

Ditto on Mr. Sill's. Very very nice. :) I definitely like the phpXP2. I viewed the others, Morpheus style isn't that shabby either ,but I still like the XP2 best. I like the dual direction of the site. As I also like to game, it's a nice touch that will be well received. :)

[Adaytay]

Zack,

Hi Thank you :D I was considering other forums but for the moment I think the balance is about right - I want to let it get firmly established before I start adding in new catagories - unless of course anyone thinks of any new forums that could slot in nicely? Hey I'm open to ideas... lol

Thanks again - great to get such positive feedback, hope everyone will stop by and say "Hi"!!

I'm trying to personally welcome every new member. Heck if the site takes off, that won't be possible, but I'll do what I can. I'm kind of handling this all on my own... only bought the domain 5 days ago!!

Anyway. I'm off to bed. Nite all!!

Ad

[Zack Barresse]

I'm trying to personally welcome every new member...


That's a handful. :D Trust me.

[Cosmos75]

After a bit of a favour actually, wonder if some of you would be kind enough to go here: forum.adaytay.com (http://forum.adaytay.com/) , and tell me what you think. Be as cruel as you like.I REALLY LIKE the logo for the forums!!

[jamescol]

Adam,
Cool site! I really like the XP look. Even though you said you had all the forums you need right now, can I suggest one for Outlook?

Cheers,
James

[Adaytay]

Can't beleive I forgot that one.... consider it added - thanks for the heads-up! :D

Ad

[cmpgeek]

the blessed filters here at work wont let me go check it out Ad, but i will check it out from here as soon as i can !

[Adaytay]

www.adaytay.com/forum is another url, I've just discovered...

[XL-Dennis]

I like the UI for the forum and also the fact members can choose their own language :)

As for the website it's hard to comment it as:
"Website Under Construction, please check back soon for more details!"

Kind regards,
Dennis

[SJ McAbney]

From the main page of your site:


Copyright Notice: Adaytay.com is a trademark of Adaytay 2004.

I don't believe that it is actually a trademark as you would have spent the six/seven hundred quid it costs to register a trademark and Adaytay.com would be followed by the TM logo.

;)

[Adaytay]

Hi Dennis,

Thanks for your comments. I did not know about the own language thing, so that's definitely a bonus - thank you for letting me know!

Is that a feature just on the phpXP2 theme or is it available on others too?

Ab... Old design. Keep meaning to update the page. Will do it tonight. Not in the final version anyway - but you're of course correct :D

One comment I've received is that the front page of the forum is "too busy" - would people agree with this statement?

Cheers,

Ad

[XL-Dennis]

Is that a feature just on the phpXP2 theme or is it available on others too?

It?s available for all themes :)



One comment I've received is that the front page of the forum is "too busy" - would people agree with this statement?

As for the phpXP2 theme it take sometime before it's loaded while other themes are loaded immedately. People with a fast connections thinks and acts on nano-seconds only...

Kind regards,
Dennis

[SJ McAbney]

Yes, it does appear to be too much.

Since there's nothing posted, for example, in the MS Office sections I'd condense that into one area which you could split up as demand for specifici applications grows. Likewise the Macromedia stuff and the Gaming areas.

[Adaytay]

OK... I'm looking at ways to reduce the size of the initial page. However as this is my first foray into forums (and phpBB) I'm somewhat at a loss as to what I can do... so any ideas would certainly be appreciated - Ab, thanks for your suggestion that's excellent I'll implement that once I get back home tonite.

Dennis - yeah I agree with that. One of the things I will be doing is seeing if I can reduce the size of the theme images somehow. Especially my logo as that's a bit too big I feel.

Thanks for the input folks I find it really valuable. I'm looking into other mods to see if there's other ways I can do things. What I'd REALLY like to be able to do is have just the main sections on the front page (catagories?), and then the users click on the relevant catagory, and the site opens a new page with the different forum areas under that catagory. I've seen it done before, I'm sure of it - but can it be done with phpBB?

I guess me setting this up was a bit of "acting before I'd thought it out completely". Not knowing anything about phpBB certainly hasn't helped!!

Ah well. Get there in the end I guess - thanks all!

Ad

[SJ McAbney]

When I started my forum I had almost 40 forums devoted to history. And when the occasional post came by in the early stages it just looked so barren so I condensed everything until something warranted a breaaway area of its own. It's certainly worked - the smaller the area at the start, the more it can encourage people to join up and post, the ore it can make a forum look busier, and the quicker a community can grow.

As for your logo, I'd make sure you install a copy of it into the other skins as the default one shows the logo while the others still show the phpBB logo.

[Adaytay]

Final thought for the day... :rolleyes:

Ab, thanks for the tip that's definitely something I'll be doing. I was aware of the issue with the logo not being displayed properly on the other skins, that's something I'll be fixing later on - had a lot on over the past few days so it was a job that "will get done eventually" - been busy setting up a new site for a friend and doing some excel work for my mums boss, as well as being unbeleivably busy at my work with a major new project and redesigning forms and finishing the latest version of my main db and making the tea and trying to keep my social life going and going to the gym and seeing my son :eek: . I think I need a(another) holiday! :bawl :bore

Anyway... I think I might just have a good crack of the :whip on my site tonight though. Heck, it sure could do with it! :yes

Thanks again for your input - it's invaluable and I really appreciate your time :)

Ad

[Adaytay]

Update:

Take a look at the updated board (http://forum.adaytay.com) and let me know what you think!

Please remember - this site is NOT a competitor for VBA Express... we deal with all sorts of things, from general Office questions to Macromedia, Graphics and general PC queries. We've also got a great gaming forum - so please, stop by and register. Lets' see just how quickly we can eat my bandwidth!!

Ad.

Now then... where do I go for the Arcade.....?

[Zack Barresse]

Does phpBB have an arcade Adam? I know that we do becaue we're vBulletin. I'm not sure that phpBB has an acrade though. www.phpBB.com would be worth checking out for it though.

[SJ McAbney]

That certainly looks much better for a preliminary forum. Good luck on making it grow.

You'd do well to understand how Google's PageRank works so that you can move near the top of it just by the words you use on your site and the links you make.