UBB.Developers Forums Community Development Promoting Your Community Forum Showcase I need some direction

I'm making changes as we speak - so to speak, err write. Anyway, I've started up www.catcherman.com and I'd like to get some feedback from this community as to my best approach.

Where's a good place to get customized avatars, graemlins and icons? I've build many communities, but never one just for me. They're always driven by business...

Thanks for your suggestions in advance...

Firstly, get rid of the splash page at http://www.catcherman.com. If all it is is a link to your boards (and not a home page to your "main" site), it's not needed. Why make site visitors jump through an extra "hoop"? Redirect the domain name directly to your forums.

Thanks Scott. The splash is just temporary, but maybe I'll do a redirect like you said. I plan on making the splash page into a home page with many more features. What about the ubb, any comments there?

Anyone else? I'm dyin' here...

I love the header image, and this is just an opinion but the blues don't go together very well. The alternating table colors are off. I'm on a laptop with a killer TFT display and the differences in hue that I see may not be very apparent on some monitors. Edit, I was imagining the green tint...

Not bad, but I think you should darken your background a bit. Use a darker white or very light grey or very light blue color. That would look better IMO.

I like your slogan.

I also think that you should experiment with your colors slightly. The tines just don't seem to go very well together. Perhaps you should use the shades of blue that are in your header image.

Another thing to consider is the number of forums you have. Now, I know it's easy to dream of all the forums you eventually want to have so you put them up right away. The problem is that people don't like to post on empty-looking boards. I would consolidate some of them now, and then as your forums get more posts in them, add more forums as different topics become more popular. For example, "Everyone Needs Knots" currently could easily fit inside a "Techniques and Equipment" forum.

Thanks for your comments. I'll probably make some changes when I get home tonight.

I thought that I was adding too many forums, but hadn't considered how to consolidate them yet. I'll probably not delete them, just turn them off for now.

I've been adjusting the colors a little and wasn't satisfied yet. I have to look at the times you all posted so I can see if you were talking about my current colors... back... yep, that's after I made the most recent changes to colors. I'll get some help from my wife, shes an art teacher.

I'll post again after I have made some changes. I'm glad you all like the slogan and header image.

Okay - I've made some changes to the color scheme and added the quick reply mod. What do you think now? Are the colors still bad? Did I condense the quantity of forums enough? How can I jump-start the community?

The blues are a bit bright and hard on the eyes (not that I'm one to talk after some of the color schemes I've done here-think halloween)

Maybe some softer natural colors...rather than the deep blue sea

So it wasn't the combination of colors that everyone had a problem with, it was the hue and brightness? OIC! Well I shall have to remedy that. Thing is, I'm not sure where to start. Maybe in an aqua-green color.

I know that once I choose my primary color I want to use analagous colors with it - maybe a duotone style like ubbdev has here. I'm just not a big fan of green on the web. I have some decisions to make.

I also like your header image
However:
1. I like font Arial, but it's not good for a UBB IMO. Use Verdana instead.
2. link/visited link colors look very bad without the blue background. Suggestion: make your forum's background color dark blue and change copyright color to white, or just make link color/visited link color much darker. Actually, I like the 2nd option better, and that's with also changing Text Color to a dark one, cause it doesn't look so well on your light blue (altcolor2).
3. you're using UBB's default icons, I suggest you to make your own ones to add a more special feeling.

Okay - I'm happy with the colors now. I've begun making custom icons. Check out the ratings images. I'll work on more custom icons soon.

p.s. I changed the font back to Verdana too. I see why it works better with UBB - it's bolder.

Well I've added the spellcheck module, but I wanted to add the Last Post By hack. It's a Multi-hack mod and I don't know the first thing about Multi-hack. I guess I've still got more research to do. Thanks for all your feedback so far.

p.s. How do you all like my rating icons?

Okay - I think it's good the way it is now. The bulletin board, that is. Any objections? Is there something special I could do that would set it apart from the rest?

I like the blues, but the white background kind of leaves the blues floating in mid air for me.