Funny thing, I was using Opera and didn't experience that. I'm not sure how to fix that though.

As for live support, thanks! When we feel that a toll free number would benefit the community, I'll definitely let you know.

As far as becoming popular goes, how do I do that? I really don't have much of a budget to spend, so I want to focus on free advertising and SEO.

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It looks like your forum and last post columns might be set or locked in width, and it is just too wide with the side columns added, but I can't be sure. Compare it to AF's set up, which is similar but doesn't cause scroll for me:

AdminFusion :: Get Connected with Forum Owners

As for becoming popular - well, that's the million dollar question, isn't it!? I don't know your niche enough to suggest anything other than the obvious or common ways to increase awareness. You have to answer this question honestly: why would people feel compelled to get OS info on your site when they can search for answers and get them from all over the net. Somewhere in there is probably a window into your challenge. Your site seems like it is for the average person - so you could probably hit up general type forums that don't really cover computer stuff, and expose your site with sigs. My site in my link, POTD, is one different way sites can increase awareness - but it is new and just starting to grow, so I can't recommend it as a strong way to get SHORT term results compared to whatever other reasonable method you would employ. At least not at this stage.

What about arrangements with small stores that sell computers? Or even online suppliers? Maybe they do not have forums of their own and are willing to direct people to your site in exchange for exposure, or ad space.

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I'll make a post in the vB.org thread for my theme and see if the author can fix it.

The reason people can come here is because we are friendly, we won't answer your question and then forget you, and we won't have threads that are unanswered more than 24 hours, and with enough staff that can be a guarantee.

Most of the time the person giving support doesn't understand the person needing support. The person needing support might say, "I was checking e-mail when all of a sudden the whole screen turned blue!" Of course we know that you're referring to a stop error, and well most likely ask them what the text says (all of it), and we can go from there. We might also tell them to download certain tools that they can then post the output of so we can see what the problem is.

And as I said before we have live support, so if a staff member is online then you can talk to them personally and we'll try our best. We even have remote desktop support free for registered members!

Well we are targeting two ranges of audiences, the average person (who has a life outside of operating systems and wants the problem fixed ASAP), and the expert (who tries to know everything like me). So if we have general forums (and posts do count in our general forum), then the experts will feel like we're becoming a general forum, and if we have just OS forums, then people won't be able to discuss life, so I've decided to get the best of both worlds and make one forum where you can discuss everything and your posts count.

As far as local arrangements go, I'm not sure if that would be considered an "endorsement", but most stores in my area don't endorse anything, just their own services.

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Okie dokie! I was thinking perhaps engaging in arrangements with various online suppliers of various computer-related stuff, but you get the idea. Anyone from an ebay powerseller to an outfit that sells mousepads, I don't know.

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I'll see what I can do in that regard. I'm constantly making changes (some behind-the-scenes, some not), so hopefully I'll make a change that will bring in new members.

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Thanks. I've just finished configuring two new templates, which I'll soon make the defaults. One is fixed, one is fluid. What do you think?

I think it looks much more professional than the red theme, and it should make us look more professional.

I'm also writing a "Message to Guests" so that guests can read more about us if they're not sure about registering (or are not sure why they should register).

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Hi. OK, two comments. The grey theme I am looking at now feels a bit dim and hard to read. I think you should lighten up the grey a notch so that the black text is differentiated more.

The ads up top - are those for guests only? Either way, if your site is just starting out I think you make almost no money from them and they are turn off. This is my personal view - I don't like ads and waited until I was built up first ... on my main forum site, that was like a year and a half before I put any up, and those were for guests and after 100K posts. They distract and send an uninviting signal. At the early stage, when you want to be as welcoming as possible, I don't personally think radiating "we are here to make money off of you" helps. But that's me.

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The text is gray, not black. I think it looks okay. If people don't like the theme, they can switch to "New Blaze", which might look a lot better to you (it's a matter of preference).

Well I haven't been making much money from them anyways, so I've turned them off everywhere

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Using Your OS - A forum for operating discussion and support

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In case we are not talking about the same thing, I meant this site:

Operating System Discussion & Support Forum: Windows | Mac OS | Linux

The difference between the background and text seems minimal to me, makes it somewhat hard on the eyes to read. The grey bg with the black (I guess dark grey) text.

Anyway, good luck. Been nice chatting.

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