Hey all been a while since ive been on here

Ive been juggling school, work and my website altogether and really havent had a lot of time for dedicated work on the site.

Unfortunatly things just seem to be going at snails pace; 0.31 users per day, 21.54 posts per day and we've been online for over a year now. It is also an all discussion forum, I had the idea of having a large amount of boards to give my members a bit of an idea on what to post about, rather than have a vauge subject.

I have recently finished adding the web-based rpg but since the forum has lost popularity so has the rpg, shame.

I have put dedicated weeks (precisely 4 Weeks, 2 Days, 01:54:00) into the site so far with no developmental help from admin or mods and seem to be getting nothing from the site I have made $80 from google ads which isnt even enough to pay for the hosting.

I also turn 18 in december so any cash worthy things I can do to improve my traffic? Do you think i should advertise on www.golivewire.com teen website for $0.49 CPM (using header image)? The site has around 700 users on at a time. Or should I just keep my money and stop funneling it into the site if im not getting anything out of it.

Please give me some feedback on anything at all tell me what you think of the main page:
www.surfaceripple.com
www.surfaceripple.com/index.php - and forum page (still adding boards*)
What puts you off? What do you like? What are you curious about?

Sorry if im making no sense its past midnight and my eyes hurt
Cheers,
Andy

ps. please move this.

Hey the site looks good, great design!

<please create a signature>

gr8 site and good design..

just wondering about radio blog ! good idea
but make the pause/play button on top of that section, it is easily searchable there. .
or ppl like me with limited downloads will suffer
u know what i mean

in forums make introduction section for new users
:-?
one section for jokes /humour etc..

best of luck for ur future

ok cheers, ill keep the radio blog thing in mind, i feel its welcoming when music is played upon entering.
Also I have an introduction board, jokes and humour good idea

for any forum to be on top you must give users a reason to post ....
most common thing these days is sharing your add revenue .... it works ... give it a try ....

tell me how :P i have adsense how will that work?

Very nice design!!

Now, go and get more traffic (gat links from relevant sites and/or forums) and then you can make some money from there.

But the starting point: the site, is very nice. Congratullations!!

Its very good design

Good Job ! nice modding, keep it up full marks !!

Great, a modified version of the mountains theme for PHPBB. Although I am not generally colour-gender descriminator, it does look as though it's being targeted at females more than males with the shade of orange. Seeing as though you have so much of it.

Personally, I hate current teenforums such as Teenspot, GoLiveWire, etc. Not because of their immature and stupidiotic members (not all of them, just many), but because the designs are cheap looking attempts at making something look fun. Teens don't always want to run into fun looking things, I should know. Your forum is currently getting at my hate teen forums side.

Improvements:
Unfortunately, it would take me too much time to write a detailed improvements scheme, so I'm just going to give you points.

• Come up with a colour scheme that doesn't involve the need to be seen as 'fun'. Go with something that is fresh, neutral and doesn't over-power in one colour.
• Loose 'say no to shnitze' w/e that's suppose to be.
• Develop a theme which is full width of the screen. Although I like 'skinny' themes, forums/portals don't suite them. They never will.
• I'd recommend stopping the automatic radio.blog from playing. Although I like the rock music, it isn't everyone's cup-of-tea and I didn't like it drawning out my own music.
• The tacky animated gif of the dragon says 'bodge-job'. Loose it and find a artistic RPG character to use that isn't flapping it's wings.
• If you can use a better (and safer) forum software, e.g. PunBB. It's standards compliant AND is a hell of a lot more safe than PHPBB. I'm only recommending it because it will require you to really concentrate on developing the design of it and taking your time. No five-minute jobs.
• Although you have many boards, it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be any better. If anything it's worse. Your members become spread out, posts go unreplied, people get fed up and just leave. Or in this case, don't post. Narrow down the amount of forums you have so that conversations are more managable and are answerable. It will gather your community and make it stronger. Then have a vote on whether to introduce new boards and which types.
• I suggest taking ideas from Teenspot and GoLivewire, whilst I hate them, they do have some good ideas when it comes to layout.

That said, I like the name. That will definately get you somewhere.

Good luck.

Wow I don't think I have ever seen a website using that many tables in a design before.

My advice... ditch the tables write some css.

As for the template I'm sure that its someone else's, that they released under a GPL as part of the phpBB community (noticed the change of logo etc), but changing the copy write message at the bottom I do not agree with and I believe it infringes upon the GPL license that come with it. So change that back support the people that support you.

As for advertising, if you are getting enough hits try adbrite should do the trick.

its ok, as a teenager, I don't see anything worth posting about.

Get better discussion topics.

I see a lot of things that are weird to me. Like RPG's and stuff.

I like the design, but it looks kinda "90's"

It could use some sprucing up, make it standards compliant, and more stark, like this forum.

hope that helps, and I'm sorry if any of it was harsh, remember, I'm just 1 person.

everyone else seems to like it alot.

carter

cheers for the critical analysis;
mooofasa - I will look into another theme for the site; like you say the current one is begining to bore me and needs to look more modern. I have killed the animated gif, stopped radio from playing and soon take off schnitzel.
However moving to another forum is out of the question.. I have modified this forum for the past year and am not prepared to through everything into another board at the moment im affraid

@ tiwggy - please tell me of this site and I will acredit them, I downloaded this template off a random site, I did not realise it was released under gpl.

@ cart - again i will start work on another template for this forum, i will delete some of the forums.
The site has a web based rpg which users can make their own character and fight monsters etc. tell me how u thought this was wierd how do think i could explain this to the users.

Andy

The site looks good. Maybe increase the width so the forum isn't so cramped.