Hey guys, well having decided that i'd had enough of running cpg-nuke for my CMS i ran in to XOOPS.
After a week of working hard on migrating users and forums etc and compiling the rest of the site by hand and working on a nice new theme to launch our 3rd year of the site i have gone live.

Just wondering if any one has any judgement thus far as i am still making some minor changes or is even interested in "fire twirling / jugglin / unicycling etc".

be kewl.

>> poiinthepark <<

any one got any thoughts? suggestions?

Your site looks pretty clear, but new visitors (that have never been on before) won't see what your site is about. You start with your recent topics/comments, is that the main thing you wanna share with your visitors? For members it would be interesting to see what the latest comment/topic is. But new visitors won't give a shit at the first look. I would put some news on the top page, but that one is empty.

So I tried to look at your shop, but you need to register for that. In short the layout is ok but the content you're showing is not having anything extra's for new visitors. They won't look in the forum the first place, I didn't eiter and still don't know what your site is about. Cheers.

And calender is not written as callender ;)

Calendar is not spelled calender, either

I agree with Oesie that the purpose of the site is very confusing for new visitors.
What's the reason for it? A discussion place? What do you discsuss? Why is there an icon for editing a user, when I am not a user? Why do I have to look at the url in the status bar, when hovering over an icon to see, what it does?

All in all a very confusing site with very little "wow-effect" on casual visitors.

thanks,

the icons were some thing i was playing with but didnt take them down which i have done, theres a lot of white space up there and was looking for a filler, which will probably be some thing like one of our videos, jim hensons are working on that one right now.

Well i was retyping the sites introduction but i have been so preocupied with sorting out the videos for the site, i forgot to finish it on top of my other work loads i have on right now.

so im looking for as much feed back as i can get to make this site look a whole lot better. Im open to any sugestions that any of you may have. The sites complete contents are all there.

basic run down of who we are: Fire Spinning / Circus arts community, sites been running for 3 years, we have the most sort after collection of fire twirling videos on the internet, some like myself do this for a living [i did im running a pub right now]. We organise events to meet others and push others to organise meets accross the globe.
totally all free and community spirited.

thank you in advance for any one that replies.

lol your diging at my spelling mistake, you got it wrong too, i had spelt it "callendar" lol that will teach me to pay attention at school.

well.

I have made many changes to my sites theme and layout, since i first posted, and i think i am finally getting there.

So i have added a welcome message! telling people what the site is about, with a few helpful links at the bottom of it. and a photo of what it is that we do.
For this is a specialist subject, not many people are going to stumble accross it every day!, but i think what i have put there will suit those that do and those that are already part of the community.

So some one said it has no wow factor about it!.
I beg to disagree, i have seen many sites posted on here, with way more feed back than my thread has got, and they have been total crap, no ounce of effort into any theme design, blocks all over the index page!, looks naff.
I'm no designer compared to some of you in the dev team.
I dont know flash at all, and i put my own logo together, i did that whole logo myself in photoshop and flash, but then i used to photoshop for a living many years ago.
Im even completly new to XOOPS and still dont fully understand php, damn i hardly know html.

So all in all i think its a damn good effort for my first try and have i asked for support in the forums here? once for a DB porting query! that no one replied to that was any help but i still got the site installed, db migrated, styled and themed by myself.

So if any one has any other criticism other than my SPELLING mistakes [ask me and i might have told you i didnt get much of an education through being bullied throughout school which is why i suffered depression all my life].
Then please post!, i wanna make this the best site for my community and so far they are loving it.

Thank you to any one that can give good honest feedback.

Good, huge progress visible from any side
From my POV only white hole in header seems... well... out of order

any thing you could sugest that could go there?

last time i tried putting a few buttons, but i didnt like the look of it.
I wish to keep it looking as simplistic as possible, and fast loading.
I like its look and feel currently, most sites based around fire twirling are all black and nasty looking.

any ideas to make it more fun and exciting looking? or do you think it's ok as it is, if there was any thing to fill the header out a bit more?

thanks.

Quote:
I'm not a designer (and even haven't designer's spirit), I'm only humble critic
But... you have think about putting text from site's description in header (this way guest can not read intro text, he'll see info in a moment)... or you can try to put links to "most often used things" for members here (not a buttons, images in common red-yellow solution)... or you can place current logo centered, not left-aligned

Quote:
Some addional K of images doesn't change situation radically... Do you know current full page (main) size?
It's far away from "recommended" - 162K of graphics, and most fat 01.jpg and poiball.jpg can be reduced
Quote:
I tried to write my "dirty ideas". It can be (I think) live as it is now. I (in your hat) will think about header and not styled blocktittle, maybe (at last position) about funny menu.hover effects... But it's only my vision, site in any case - your, and your decision will be final and absolute