Xaine

I think Invision is easy to skin its just that it takes a long time, you are better to download a skin and custimize that. If you are going to do that take a look at invisionize.com for both downloadable skins and I am sure a tutorials there to.

I am a personal fan of Iframes. I use them in my site for the reason that I don't know how to do PHP, yet. they are good for graphical sites so that the images that are on every page never reloads. Though the search engines may have probelms with that I am sure there is a solution to that.

I like the blueish/girly ones layout better but the colors and design in the other is much better. I would propose a comprimise of the two. Take the layout of Web Saint and use the graphics of Site Polish.

Heh mines pretty easy. Xaine is the name of a Role Playing Character that I use within some of the forums I go to. The name Xaine came from a book called Dragon and Phoenix. I liked the name and after I started with a new character I choose it as its name and as my screen name.

Well for one it seems you guys are going to need a good site that allows you to be flexable and to try things and easily change them back if you mess it up. For that I suggest useing a portal as Darren said. And it would be easier to tell if you were to show the site. Also if you were to use a prtal you can link it to your forum and allow it to pull things directly from it. I personally don't know how to achieve this but I have seen it done. Invision provides it if I remeber right. Simple is always good but if you go to low tech on your site it may not attract many people.

Another way is this

<divstyle="position:absolute;left:0;top:0;WIDTH=0;HEIGHT=0;">

You can set it anywhere by changeing the top and left poistion. Its in pixals as usual and you can set it anywhere. Its a good bit of code even if there are shorter ways to go about it.

heh my biggest problem with a flash site is the time it takes to load the page. But once your in everything usually loads at a good rate and you can do some increadable stuff with flash. That JKRowlings site is a good example of well done flash site. Yet it still takes to long to load for my tastes.

I use WS_FTP Pro 8 I think it is.. but lately I have been haveing problems with it only uploading portions of the files or it won't upload them at all. I don't know why this happened but it does. Has anyone else expeireinced this? Its a great program cuase its simple and until recently it was reliable. Maybe it is due to my 56k internet connection? (Yeah I know 56k is pittaful.)

I think that the thing a forum needs most is a dedicated set of users, without users the best site in the world would now become the worst. But mostly the thing I look for in a forum is a charismatic admin that leads the forum in the directions needed. Without such a leader sites do into the dung heap quickly and the admin is sitting back with a stupid look on his face wondering why the site failed. The admin has to be able to relate with the members each one makeing them feel as if he has a personal relationship with each one. This is hard once you get a lot of members so a team of people that can do this is needed not just one. If a forum has no leader or one that thinks he is better then his members simply becuase he owns it then the forum is destined to fail. Other then a good user group and admin good software is needed. You gotta have a forum that looks nice and has plenty of options. Otherwise the guests will look at it, raise an eyebrow and say, "Riiight, like I am going to join this." yeah looks are that important. You could have great members and the forum could be grand in fun and whatever else but if it looks bad those who know nothing of your site will not join. Hmm... other then that I can't come up with more.

Here are a few sites that give you a range of brushes. Pretty much anything you can imagine can be found in them.. If its not what your looking for then, well, I'll have to find the ones I left out.

Forbidden Fire
Unyeilding
Sky.ti-fi
Final Summit
komettails.hamha

My Process is this. 1. Get a rough idea of the sites content and purpose.2. Do a search on the subject at hand and see how sucessful site like it are.3. Start jotting down ideas.4. Start gathering a staff around me that is willing to help out. (sometimes I skip this one.)5. Start the design and find an acceptable layout.6. Make a few pages of the site as kind of a demo site.7. Launch the demo.8. Watch the stats of the site to see the hits and how activity is.9. If its good, luanch more of the site. If its bad, scrap it.10. (if its bad.) Do it all over again...

I would have to vote for IE. Its compatable with most websites, in fact I have yet to find one its not. But its fairly secure and well made. Though I have only used Netscape other then IE so i can not say anything about the rest of them. Though I have heard about Firefox from a few freinds but I won't test it until I get my personal computer back.

heh yeah and once we get hosted *coughs since he is not.* there are three that are really good. Invision Powered Board, you can get a free trial that allows you to get so many members/posts then it shuts off. I don't suggest it though it is one of the best. Next is PHPBB, its got nothing right off the bat but there are so many hacks for it, if you have the time its a good one. Then there is YaBB I have not used this one yet, so I can't tell you about it but it is popular and it looks good.

I use 250free.com They give you 250 mb of space and bandwidth. And if you use it as just an image host you will probably never run out of bandwidth. I have tried few others but find this one to be more reliable then anyothers I have used.

I use Photoshop it's an easy and clean program, also if you dig into it deep you can really find some amazing things are possible with it. I use it to make signitures and Avatars as well as layouts for websites. The feature of being able to slice your images into peices that are easily managagible is great when makeing a sties layout, makes codeing it so much easier.

Another that is self tuaght, well I tuaght myself the basics and decided I liked what I could do with that and so I started into a class in my highschool days were they tuaght me little more. After this I flew off the handle looking up tutorials on the subject until I came to learn what I know now. Now that I am fairly fluent in HTML I have started to branch out into PHP, CSS, Java ect. When I was still in the basics I used dreamweaver to help me get the more complex parts yet I find now that I can do things in notepad that dreamweaver could not do. But as it is said most people can learn to do HTML. What makes a great site is the Graphics and layout. I think somebody already said that in this posts though..