OK - firstly, thanks a million to all of you that have helped me with this one. Once again, fellow Xoopers picking up their fellow men! Some diamond word of advice in all that, all of which I have taken on board. Fantastic.
Now then, I have now tweaked the site a bit to reflect peoples suggestions. For example, the User Login box has gone, leaving the top right 'Login' or 'Register' area with the little dog drawing your attention to it. I've also brightened that up and made it bigger for the partially sited!
I have re-ordered the central box as suggested putting the most important areas higher up and lesser important one's further down.
I've also moved the search box in the right column further down, leaving the more important one's higher up. In addition, I've ditched the Google code snippet that I had at the bottom of the central block because it's already in the right hand block - no point having two Google Search boxes - what a drag on bandwidth!
The issue of 'Reporting lost and Found Dogs'. I have now scrapped the instructions. I already knew that was overkill but was worried that without it my users may struggle. But, taking Rowdies advice, I have made the two top click menu's bigger, brighter, and they link directly to the submit.php files so that the user can report either a lost or a found dog straight away and the two instances of MyAlbum are set up to deal with those. However, as you know, if I wanted to stop the links appearing in the Main Menu all together the modules themselves have to be de-activated or users not given access to them (correct me if I'm wrong?). So, I have re-worded them to 'Browse Lost Dogs' and 'Browse Found Dogs'. If the user clicks on those, rather than the one's at the top, they will be directed to the 'top level' of the MyAlbmum module which displayes the categories so they can pick what breed or type of dog to look through. Then, if having looked around they also want to register a dog, providing they are logged in, they will get access to the hyperlink to submit.php allowing them to create a report just as though they had used the links at the top of the page. I have to agree that this area of the site is the core, and the most crucial, so I am happier with it now. Thanks Rowdie.
The issue of providing content to lure users to register - I agree 100%, but in my case, I have set this so that they have to register to create a report of a lost or found dog. This, I hoped, would be the incentive. They also need to register to submit topics in the forums and to submit news. Unfortunately, my site offers little more than those 3 core areas, so I am hoping that users will want to contribute enough to register, if you see what I mean? If I allow them to do those things without registering there will be nothing more to give - besides, if they don't then other users cannot contact them because there will be no e-mail address, user name etc. I have used less vital things like Polls as blanket access to ensure users stick around long enough to see what the site has to offer.
I will indeed try to get involved in some web rings and contribute to other dog related forums and add my signature to those I may also consider re-making my logo to be more descriptive. Good point.
I will contact my webhost regarding DNS referals. I agree that I should perhaps have left it as .co.uk. When I started to re-design it I originally intended it to be International, so I bought the .com. However, once I got into Xoops, I realised that there wasn't a module that allowed me to create a reporting structure like MyAlbum but including all the countries as a selectable tab. Unfortunately, I offered about £100 to see if someone could make one, but I was told that it was too specific and time consuming for fellow Xoopers to do for me, so I left it. For that reason it has had to stay UK based - for now at least.
That's it - fantastic guys. Really, thanks a million - you have provided the inspiration needed to carry on with this little venture. And now having been taught to look at from a different angle, I am quite excited about the challenge - indeed you are right - getting people to use the site is all part of the fun!
Thanks geezers!