Please Critique My Site Before I move on further

This is a NINGJA SKIN not using the site builder.

My site is going to be for all those into the 1940s so the colours may look a bit drab for some but trying to keep the colours of the time. I have made lots of little changes here and there and also a few bigger ones.
Most of the things I have done is more to do with styling the pages rather than adding in any extra modules etc, these I will add in later to give more lists and options but for now more to do with the styling.

One of the bigger changes I made was for the photos as they are quite big if a large photo has been added, they are really massive on the screen so changed that to make it easier to view them. Also the profile images are very big on a mobile so will be changing those sizes to, already resized the image gallery ones a little for the mobile side. Added some border around the photos list with a little hover on them to.

Well anyway have a good click about and I would be interested on your views and some helpful input is welcome as well as any bad as this helps to.
Thanks
John

here is the site: http://1940snetwork.com/

PS: I am on the slow Arvix server at the moment so it may be slower to load but it will be moved onto Jamrooms faster servers quite soon.
updated by @john-bizley: 03/22/15 06:24:38PM

Looking real nice. The only things that stood out as 'very bright' were on the profile pages, the user is online's green and the yellow of the star rating marks.

Well done. (take any design advice from me warily, I'm not good at graphic design and colours.)
updated by @michael: 02/14/15 06:43:49PM

Thanks Michael I appreciate that. Very good point about the stars as yes I agree they are a little bright so will do something about that and also the user online part.
Thanks

I notice you and I have set up our home page layout in very much the same way. There are a couple of things I changed on my site that I notice you may want to address on yours as well John...or not. But I'll mention them!:

1) I added links to Forums and Events in the top main navigation bar. (blogs is another possibility if you wanted)

2) Just as you clarify "Latest Forum Posts" in its module title, I clarified "Older Blog Posts" instead of having read only "older Posts"...since without that I thought people might think it's forum posts or group posts.

3) depending on how important your blog posts are to your site: I found the hugeness of the blog posts at bottom were just too dominating on my site. I didn't want blogs to be way more important than groups or forums. Your site may be different!

4) adding scroll bars to Latest Music, videos, and members modules enabled the modules to show more than 5 entries yet not take up more space. My active musician members want to scan over at least the latest dozen of each category.

5) Not sure why you need pagination at bottom of your index page?- seems to only be there to allow the next batch of big blog posts to show on page 2...is that what you want? Consider keeping the site home page limited to one page. ...If they want to see more blogs they can click to the blogs section?

6) In keeping with the 1940s theme...have you considered making the module blocks background an ivory rather than bright white? The block titles could match as well.

7) In the home page gallery pictures, I liked the 6 across rows spanning the whole width for my site too. However, knowing my members typically post multiple pictures of a similar type (like say 8 or 10 pics showing the back and sides of a dulcimer they are building)...I did not want too many of a similar image 'taking over' the main page photo view. So I did two things: I added a third row to make 3 rows of 6 across (thus showing a selection from various members at any given time)... and I set the member limit to uploading no more than 6 images in a single day, to keep a single member from dominating the main image gallery.

8) Is there a reason your Latest Forum Posts module block is missing its "ALL" option?

I like the various grays, dark blue, and black you have used, with the leather texture in the background ...seems in keeping with the theme.

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John, I don't know if you even wanted any input other than about colors and design, but since I had worked on these same above issues on my own site, I thought I'd mention them in case you find any of it useful.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

Hi John
I like the colours and textures. My only comment is on the footer for each page which looks odd because it's slightly narrower that the main content block. The main and footer blocks could also do with a bit of spacing between them imo.
Cheers


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Paul Asher - JR Developer and System Import Specialist

Thanks Paul, I see what you mean about the footer will get that fixed up and also that spacing.
Thanks for taking the time to for taking a look.

@strumelia
Thankyou for writing that up Strumelia as it's very helpful. Yes the layout may look the same as it's just the standard Ningja layout as not used the sitebuilder to create the pages. I will be adding some links into the main nav menu once I get everything in place.
2) Good point about the blogs and will make that change.
3) Yes the blogs tend to outweigh the forums going by previous uses on my old Ning site but I do agree they look a little big on the homepage.
4) I did think my scrollbars where ther already so will check into that, thanks for pointing that out.
5) That pagination for the blogs I probably will remove as you are right on what you say.
6) Good point as the backgrounds do look a little bright, I may add some old paper texture to them so they look more like old type documents.
7) I may do the same and add some more rows to the photos on the homepage and I like your idea of limiting the uploads per day.
8) hmm I wonder why that is not showing the 'All' for the forum posts, will look into that.

Once again Strumelia what you have written has been very helpful indeed which is one reason I added this post as it's always good to get another person's perspective.

Maybe it would be an idea to have another category in the Jamroom forum for site critiques.

Thanks again
John

Oh, glad it was helpful!


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

Made a few more changes after the feedback and it is coming along nicely, still a few more bits to do like the blogs at the bottom of the main page but everything is looking great so far.
Keep the input coming as it is very helpful
Thanks!

Looking good!


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Douglas Hackney
Jamroom Team - Designer/Developer/Support
FAQ-Docs-Help Videos

Well I think I have finished with the overall look. Next is to move onto adding more list modules to the menus to filter out the data etc. Just got to get the badges to also show to visitors as well.

http://1940snetwork.com/founder

I like too!

I love the pale green texture you put in the module backgrounds.
Just my own taste, but I personally liked it better without the slightly darker green vertical stripe added down the left side of each module. Seems to make things a little busy, with less 'breathing space'. Also, it takes up valuable horizontal space in each module, so that when your screen gets smaller as on a phone, the text will wrap much sooner because the green stripe asserting its space takes priority over the text. Thus, it may make it harder to see what an event name is, or a song's title, etc.

Are you using site builder? and what skin? I envy how far along you are!


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

Thanks Strumelia, glad you mentioned that sripe as it was a test for something but forgot to remove it but have done now.
No not using the site builder and the Skin is just the Ningja Skin. Mostly everything is just styling in css and a few little adjustments to some templates, I just do a little bit each day. Next is just to work on adding more to the main toolbar for lists like site blogs, forum etc. I have not shared much of how I did things on the forum but will do now I know how things works a lots better, didn't want to post any tips etc until I was confident things worked out ok.

Thanks Douglas