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Forum Layout-What do you think?


Razor42

Forum Layout-What do you think?  

6 members have voted

  1. 1. Forum Layout-What do you think?

    • I Like it.
      5
    • I love it
      1


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Hey guys,

Created this layout and thought I'd share it with you all, please don't be too harsh I have only just stated working with Photoshop but feel free to share your opinions and off some advice and hopefully you all like it :D.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]622[/ATTACH]

Forum-P.thumb.jpg.14e392ec5a5aa7f9fafe41f48a118177.jpg

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Outside of the foul colors (though the background I could almost like), it's a forum; an area for sharing thoughts, points of view, meeting and greeting people, so why have you got a usable forum (vertical) area of only 336 pixels out of 753? That's less than half of your screen real estate taken up with static and/or mostly irrelevant junk?

TBF, it's not just your layout at fault; look at the most of the current forum software and even well known forums like *ahem* MWG - they often do the same - massive headers, pointless footers; the key component surely is the topics and discussions therein.

Yes, I know there are only 3 forums presented on that screenie; however no matter how you look at it - the top 152 pixels are essentially irrelevant (though I'd always accept some form of global navigation bar ~30-40 odd pixels high seems to be good).

Some examples - not saying these are any good, simply here for comparison

* Burning Board -- Used to be a great favorite of mine

* MyBB -- Looks nice but jees, how far down is that first forum?

* XenForo -- Gathering support apparently

There are many more, but I assume you are aiming for the PHP market (software wise) and those are about the best looker's I can source quickly of the top of my head.

[Edit]

Extra poll option

* Yeuch [X]

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Bit harsh...
You asked. Sorry, was I meant to soften the blow or blow candy up your ass?

I assumed when you asked for an opinion, you wanted an honest one; yes, you may well have just started with photoshop - but surely a forum is presented with html and css. The content of a forum is what at the end of the day makes it, though first looks will play a large part in whether people sign up.

Try designing it with html and css only; use one of the color designers in triadic or tetradic mode; ie Color Scheme Designer (random #anchor to show the effect of a tetradic scheme)

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Colors are too bright plus the boxes are way too big IMO if you got rid of the speech bubble on the far right box you would be able to make it smaller plus in clutter it! Where you got "section 1" I would probly have that central, vertically in the middle, many a bigger font and colored black so it's easier to read. The forums logo is a bit too big/unneeded I'm sure the user will be able to guess where they are without having a big green title. And personally I would only have adverts in game (only if I had to).

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Outside of the foul colors (though the background I could almost like), it's a forum; an area for sharing thoughts, points of view, meeting and greeting people, so why have you got a usable forum (vertical) area of only 336 pixels out of 753? That's less than half of your screen real estate taken up with static and/or mostly irrelevant junk?

TBF, it's not just your layout at fault; look at the most of the current forum software and even well known forums like *ahem* MWG - they often do the same - massive headers, pointless footers; the key component surely is the topics and discussions therein.

Yes, I know there are only 3 forums presented on that screenie; however no matter how you look at it - the top 152 pixels are essentially irrelevant (though I'd always accept some form of global navigation bar ~30-40 odd pixels high seems to be good).

Some examples - not saying these are any good, simply here for comparison

* Burning Board -- Used to be a great favorite of mine

* MyBB -- Looks nice but jees, how far down is that first forum?

* XenForo -- Gathering support apparently

There are many more, but I assume you are aiming for the PHP market (software wise) and those are about the best looker's I can source quickly of the top of my head.

[Edit]

Extra poll option

* Yeuch [X]

Not harsh at all, 1000000% agree with this. That is all

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Green: Bad choice to use so much of it.

Typography: Equally as bad for the header type.

Top-bar, way to big, you can get away with the top-bar being as big, just lower the size of the items that exist within.

@Section header: Why so close to the left and the bottom, and why the same size font for the contents within the forum, it's a header surely it should be a little bigger.

@Forum contents: You take up to much space, the "comments icon" shouldn't be there, or incorporate in someway that it adds a little something, but doesn't take anything away (icons should be 16,24,48,64 [px]) with the first two being the prominent choices.

@background: Some will like it, some won't guess that's a choice you have to make, personally I don't like it, I prefer simple backgrounds that don't take away from the main content but compliment it nicely. However it wouldn't stop me from using/making use of the forum itself.

As it's your first or your first actual design, I'd say it's not to bad, probably not something you should make use of for a product, but it's good for learning/experimenting.

I'd suggest looking up tutorials for web design, browse things like Dribbble for inspiration and ideas that you can make use of in your own designs.

As Octarine suggested, view other forums/forum software and see how they've designed their forums to make more use of the space given for actual content.

And to top it all off, you've got a long way to go, you've designed the landing page, there's the topic pages/board pages/reply and what have you that'll need designing too, with their own requirements.

Good luck, with your web-design learning.

P.S: Point of view of someone that would use such product, I'm not a designer.

P.P.S: Why is there only an option to love or like it?

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