Hey everybody, I have had my forum up for about a month and had some success gathering members but not as much as I had hoped, so I was hoping you would have some tips for me. My forum URL is http://www.forums.insaneent.net/phpbb2/index.php . The topic of the forum and its parent website ( www.insaneent.net ) is Gaming, Computer technology, and movie news.

That being said, I hope some of you can offer me some tips on generating some more traffic!

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I'm not a fan of the domain, at all ....First, "Insane" doesn't exactly suggest entertainment...Additionally, the 'ent' in insaneent really confuses me. I can see it's supposed to be shorthand for 'entertainment' but first of all, it's not common everyday shortand (like 'net' would be for 'internet'), and second, it doesn't fit very well on the end of the word 'insane'

Ok, enough about the domain...that's not something that can be changed easily, but I do have a feeling that it isn't helping your promotion

Favicon...get one - It adds a nice touch to your forums. I would add something to your logo - something underneath INSANE...either Ent. or Entertainment....and the navigation links below it are small, kind of hard to read.

Lastly, move the quick login boxes from the bottom to the top...it's a quick login for a reason, and shouldn't be placed at the bottom of the page ....I'm not sure why phpBB does that

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...some super-sweet signature

I guess I could always trash the domain after 6 months, how long I have the domain until I have to pay again, and get a new one, but I'm kinda stuck with that name anyways, I've been using it for a while now on my old website and then I made the new website with the same name.
Yeah, I would have done that already, but the part below INSANE is a bunch of seperate pictures attached to the buttons below, so to fix this I need to make all new buttons on one image and then cut it up, which I should probably do soon...

If I can figure out how to do that, I will.

Thank you for the review of my forum, I hope some of these changes help

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This tutorial should help you, its written assuming you are using subsilver as your skin but it should be relativly similar for your forum, I don't think they would've changed the style way too much. The part you'll want to read starts at index page editing, it explains itself from there, good luck.

http://www.phpbb.com/kb/article.php?article_id=18

I hate to jump on the bandwagon here, but Ryan truly hit the nail on the hammer.

You know, the forums in particular are clean and all, but the colors are just drab to some degree and they just look.......lifeless. Not trying to be a hater, but it just looks too generic in design.

And the banner i'm not a big fan of either. The menu system is "neat" to a degree with having it roll around the bottom of the header image, but neat is only a so-so compliment in this case. Guess i am being a hater here (not intentionally) but the header is just unattractive in my opinion, especially for the topic of the site. It just looks like the header of a parts supply website or something.......Only text just kind of has little appeal to me personally.

And your site doesn't really define itself very well at all. I know you mention that it's gaming, computers, etc.....but that's a HUGE category to be covered in any detail. I would try to find a theme for the forums that somehow talks to people visiting, clueing them into what it is your target audience is. As of now, the forum home doesn't speak to me in any terms other than "here's a forum, click a link if you like....." , it just doesn't say anything. Kinda lifeless.

Yeah, I guess I could narrow down the topic to one of the 3 things (probably gaming or movies).
Do you mean theme as in a layout, or theme as in the topic?

@ Kem Rixen: Thanks for the link

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