No replies YET? xD
Here are my suggestions/recommendations, it’s quite a load so don’t get angry! LOL, you asked for it. D:
I will work from top to bottom so it won’t seem like I’m jumping around. I know that you installed a skin for starters, but you should change the color scheme here and there. Like I’ve already mentioned to you, it would be wise to contact the original artist of the AF logo and have it resized so it looks proportional.
In addition, here is what I recommend first. In order for the website to go big, I think that it would require some professionalism (joke). I would change the color of this menu bar. Here is a preview of what it would look like.
I also think that there are too many menu bars at the top. You’ve got the My Account/My News/Inbox and then you’ve got the black one, then the blue one, then the gray one. It’s so much that it looks disorganized, not to mention that a lot of the links are repetitive. It reminds me of a browser with a ton of toolbars installed, LOL. My suggestion would be to remove the bottom gray menu bar. It is convenient to have a search bar on the front page so I would say that it is a must. But if you remove the gray menu, you lose it. I would get rid of the “Submit A New Link Here” because you already have a “SUBMIT A NEW STORY” on the first menu bar; and then, replace the green one with a search bar. Here’s a preview of what I recommend.
The next thing I’d address is the super busy right-side panel that we talked about. There are so many “Top this,” “Top that,” “Top etc.” However, there is already an existent “TOP USERS” on the black menu bar up top. Again, I think that it is too repetitive so I would choose to completely remove all of them and replace them with something else. I would also remove the little “Inbox” link at the bottom too because there is already an Inbox button up top. HOWEVER, you could replace it with one of those “Back to top” kind of links. =) Along with those modifications, the three “125 x 125” boxes are kind of eye-catching because they’re big boxes, up top, and to the side. Like I said, I would turn those into a “Top Stories” kind of panel. Here is an example.
These images will link the user to the top 3 most popular posts. You might, however, need someone to frequently update them (i.e. make the graphics, upload them to replace the new ones).
Also, you could add a little gadget on the right-side panel where users could subscribe to new updates, etc. Since those three images display the top 3 most popular posts, you could have a gadget that displays the most recent posts too.
See what you think. It may be a bit much, especially since I just did little visual adjustments because I know that there’s a lot of coding behind the works of what the users see. Whether or not you like the changes I suggested above, I think that if you coordinate all the menu bars and texts accordingly to the AF signature logo, it will looks more like one whole piece put together, helping it to appear more professional and "cleaner." Rather than a logo plus a randomly chosen skin. Does that make sense? @___@
I like stupid people; they make me happy that I'm smart. D: