Board Name: Outline
Board URL: http://outlineforum.com/index/
Board Description: Outline provides ZetaBoards themes, InvisionFree skins and graphics. PSD files, tutorials and documentations are also available. Our services include a support forum as well as skin, theme and graphic requests.
Specific things you would like a comment on (optional): Note that I'm currently making some minor layout updates. If you have any ideas for new contests and possibly a larger contest I'd love to hear them. ^_^

Thank you.

I'm sure your reputation for quality themes and skins will bring you some measure of success on your forum. However, I think that there are some fundamental problems with your forum set up that may prevent your community from growing at the rate you would like.

Strengths

• Great first impression visually.
• Impressive graphics, as I would expect from a skinning board Very sleek. Creative, but not outlandish.
• Providing psd files along with tutorials is a step above the normal offerings.

Weaknesses

• Too much of your content is archived. Although it keeps your forums supremely organized, archiving can often make it seem like there isn't much going on presently.
• Portal is basically unused. Why give it a premier link placement and not take advantage of it?
• Skin/Theme database characterized as "vast" but there are less than 50 topics there. Since you don't allow guests to see what you have, it seems an overblown boast. Since your strength seems to be in the quality of graphics you produce rather than the numbers of them, better to emphasize that aspect of your database.
• With no forums accessible to guests except advertising....your board has a cold unfriendly feel to it. The only topics visible are the advertisements. Who do you think is going to come and look at advertising on a board where they can't see anything else? One of the things I look at when personally deciding to join a board is their announcements and feedback forums. It gives me an idea of the kind of community and activities the board offers. If I can't get a sense about that, I usually don't join.
• Lacks any kind of welcome message.
• The PayPal donation link right in your banner (although beautifully customized) is a turn-off. It's the first thing a guest sees, and at that point, you haven't proven to me yet that your site is worth my time, let alone my donations. Consider relocating it to somewhere in your resource area.

Recommendations

• Use or lose portal link. One possibility: use the portal to display some samples of your graphic creations. Rename it as a gallery or preview.
• Create a gallery of boards who are using your skins or graphics. Show it off.
• You need the kind of contests that relate to your strengths, and will involve and grow your graphics community. I would suggest a whole string of battles/contests related to graphics that are continuous and concurrent. Have signature contests, logo contests, main title contests, button contests, pip contests, etc...all the skills you need to do for skinning/theming. For non-artist members, give them a way to plug into some community contests as well as encouraging them to vote in your graphics contests. Cartoon searches, poetry or joke contests are easy and can be fun.
• Develop your tutorials and graphic support areas. Mentoring other graphic artists is a good way to promote good will and attract those with that interest to your board.
• Give something away. A resource forum where no resources can be accessed without registering and making required posts is just too much trouble for most people. I'm not saying have no requirements for anything, but find something that you are willing to share with those who stop by so there is something for prospective members to sample. If what you offer is good, you have a better chance at getting more new members.
• Feature your strengths in your advertising on other boards. Capitalize on your reputation by including complimentary quotes, recommendations and links to your best projects in your sigs and other advertising . You are the star of your forum and the reason people will join your forum. Don't be reticent to use your best advertising currency.

Thank you for your review. As you may have seen we are currently discussing introducing new guest contest, including skin previews and member testimonials on our services. We actually do run a club for our budding and talented designers (which is an invite only group). :P

You're welcome. So far, you've built a very classy forum. Now on to making it an exciting and thriving one. :)

Sounds like you have plans that will take you in the right direction.

Yes, there's plenty of planning going on at the moment.

Would anyone else like to give comments?

Just for the sake of being a forum that offers skins and themes, you should make sure that the CSS of the skin you use is valid. :)

The default CSS isn't valid.
Property word-wrap doesn't exist : break-word
Property overflow-x doesn't exist in CSS level 2.1 but exists in [css3] : hidden
^^ For example those.

Heh, removed them and there was no difference. It's now valid. :)

Oh, so the invalid parts of your CSS are based on ZB's default CSS?

2 of them were. The others were due to a parsing error where I'd accidentally put a space between the # and the hex.

It's just now valid in accordance to W3C standards, which is a plus, I suppose.