"Forumy"... hmmm... is that a word?

Anyways, what's your take on making your forum look less (much less) like the default?

Think it confuses potential members and steers them away (novices, for example) or attracts them even more?

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CafeParents.com - Parent-to-Parent discussion forums

When you say default do you mean the default forum skin, or the default for most forum lay-outs?

I'll assume you mean the latter, in all honesty it really depends on your topic most of the time. If you have a topic that caters to a younger audience with a short attention span, you're going to want a simplistic, straight forward layout, or you'll scare them off. With older audiences you can usually make it more complex, I'll use for an example Inkify (hope you don't mind), they have a very different (in my opinion) looking layout. At the same time however, it is very effective, while it isn't the norm, it still gets the point across.

Maybe not the best example, but the point being that the easiest way to deliver content to the group you cater to is usually the best. If that seems a bit confusing it's because I was in the car for three or so hours today and a bit tired.

I meant the latter and I catch your drift, for the most part.

I guess my problem is I'm coming across a good amount of older (40+ y/o) users joining up and while I plan a simple, clean design (and tweak of the layout), I'm worried that a move away from what they're used to (the default layout) may scare them away.

Still not sure if I can pull the design off. I'm still just brainstorming it.

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CafeParents.com - Parent-to-Parent discussion forums

you could always ask your users... or give them a choice of a few different templates to use.

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If your members are not tech-savvy, then stick to the simple, "forumy" layouts...if you start to get too crazy, people won't be able to figure out who to use the place...and even if they do, they will never become completely used to it, which means that their experience is never as good as it could be.

If you do have a tech savvy crowd, then I say go for it...these people like to see stuff mixed up a little bit (not too much), and should be able to adjust to new layouts/features fairly easily...the thing to remember is to be sure to never lose sight of the fact that you are still running forums and you need to make it easy for your members to actually use them...how you do this, is up to you. A good example of a heavily modified layout that I can think of right now would be http://www.gaiaonline.com/community

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...some super-sweet signature

Make things accesible for your users no matter what their experience level. I always add 'redundant' navigation and easy to find links for things like update signature / avatar etc. I think it helps the user "get comfortable"

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I say you defiantly need to add your own touch to things. If you just have a Boring default skin it loosk like you dont really know what your doing.. There are some VB sites out ther that aint even changed the banner at the top to match there website name etc. i dotn feel its away to attract members. but thats just my opinion