NOTE: This began life as a reply to a forum post in October 2006, asking for a critique of of the website, geek4ums.com (you can get to the site without my help - it is a bit different than it was a year and a half ago when I originally wrote this). It was in the section for Forum Organization. I’m a stickler about staying on-topic, so my review was about how the site was organized and nothing more. The following is my, um, “review”, to use the term loosely. I offer this review to you because it is endemic of many websites across the Ether. It might even apply, in some ways, to yours.

To me, “organization” has more to do with how your site is laid out, how accessible it is to the visitor looking for something and whether the way you have organized your forum categories and discussion forums is conducive to adding and retaining members and encouraging visitors and lurkers to become participants. Organization doesn’t have much to do with colors or graphics or the style and design of your forum.

Now, aside from the the questions of style and design, you have problems from the top down. Just because its pretty, doesn’t mean it’s organized well. I’ll begin with… (more…)