Electric Bandits is a website which I have put on the backburner for quite a while now but I'm still making moves to get it started. Long term I hope I'm still running in a few years time as it covers a lot of things I'm interested in ie. geek stuff : gaming, computers, gadgets etc. Half the battle with running a successful forum or blog is being interested in the subject so that it doesn't feel like work ie. it's easy to update and participate in them because you'd probably be posting on a forum about the subject anyways.
I'm going to be spending some time and money promoting the site over the next 6 months but the first thing it needs is a good forum design. So I posted an ad in the paid services room in vbulletin.org and got a few emails about the job. Relivo responded with the most professional reply and thankfully they had a portfolio to match. They had actually redesigned one of my older forums which I sold last year (Freeroll Forums) and they're not too expensive either.
The designer, Kolby, messaged me last night to say that he had finished the first draft.
Here it is :
Notes about this design :
- Forum design has room for 728×90 banner at top. Will probably have room for one at bottom too.
- Forum has right sidebar. This area will display forum stats, latest posts, sponsors etc.
- This logo will not be used. Kolby admitted logos aren't his strong point so was happy to knock $50 off the price. I'm going to hold a contest at SitePoint once the design is live and get a colourful logo which grabs peoples attention.
It's quite difficult to tell how the final version will look just now but I'm optimistic. It's not an overly fancy design but it's clean and professional looking and is perfect for a tech site. Kolby has been great to work with so far so I can definately see myself working with him again for future forum redesigns.
What do you think?