Please beta test this site.

Dont mince your words.

I am building it on an iterative schedule.

Extensions and new features are developed USUALLY as a result of user requests. I have some plugins developed that are coming online soon.

what i need now is beta testers who are willing to test and suggest new features. The latest plugin developed now is a special holiday extension (keeping that for now pending your replies).

I have already tested with friends but i want people who have no direct contact with me to assess the design and features.

I am not afraid of bad criticism.

The sucess of the site is the focus right now.

I intend to make the speed of change and site feature upgrades our core feature and to build as much as possible the most user-friendly web app.

please assess and preferably join.


www.naijafreetalk.com

Bad:

Aim of the site is unclear; is it a blog? a forum?

The font is too small and the wrong color

The categories are not clear

There is no search facility

Good:

Quite quick  (although this could be down to a low usage rate)

Nice, neat, 'easy to maintain' design

Advice:  This strikes me as a site designed by a PROGRAMMER, and 9 out of 10 programmers make lousy designers.  I suggest you study web design or get a designer. Or on the other hand do what this site is doing - don't try to re-invent the wheel and get an out of the box solution like VBulletin.

Good luck!

As I said earlier. Ouch. Thanks. About the font(thot so too).

Made a few new friends offline and their comments were similar though more pointed cos it was in person. New designer coming online this week and he's more of graphic designer turned web designer not coder-turned-designer.

Getting VBulletin scares me cos I have looked into the face of SMF code and that was the face of evil. Playing with the site software has really pushed my PHP programming practices ahead 10x. I just love the idea of an almost infinitely extensible site and the logical next step after plugins is, i'll leave that for now.

Will make it more focused. Thanks linxon.

Need more .

funny enough is site is ok but it looks unfinished. the aim of the site is very clear. the name is naija free talk for clearness sake! and when u get to the site you see forum, lates discussions, topic etc. that should tell u ur in a forum. im one of those people who likes small fonts so im ok with the font.

if the site where mine, here are some thing i would have done different. (please note im a designer not a developer, hence my way of thinking)

1. my banner where i have my logo would be bolder. it would capture ur attention whe u get to the site (which also goes for the logo).

2. my green would be darker for visiblity purposes

3. i would change main theme to something like main topics or hot topics or something else (for people to quickly understand what's going on).

4. main theme (which is now main topic or hot topics or something else) would have a bolder font and alligned left (because the topics under it are also alligned left. makes it look organized) same thing goes for topic - add new >>.

5. the main topics highlighted in green under main theme would have a bold font (also to get attention and so that the categories are clear)

6. i'll draw more attention to the login/register area.

7. overall (cos im tired for now) i'll work more on the graphics and layout. (you know, have little beautiful icons here and there would do more than u can ever imagine). green is kinda dull but the secreat to bringing it out is having other colourful things around it to draw attention away from it. icons for one, adverts (thid google adsense stuff). if u dont have other adverts, advertise the forum itself on the home page. nothing too big and scarry just captivating. ok i'm officially tired. to this helps a bit.