Hey guys, I'd just thought I'd share some suggestions on how I think you could improve the layout of the forum.
I remember before we moved to this version of the board, there was a thread where we were asked about our input on the new layout and my complaints from back then still hold true. The biggest one being too many sections, The beauty of Belly Love was its simplicity. There were like what, 4 main sections? Something like that. On here, it's just cluttered as hell.
Take the Health & Fitness part for example. Do we really need an entire section devoted to that? IMO all of those sub-forums could just be threads in a "General Discussion" board, along with stuff like the Movie and Game boards. It would streamline the design so much.
The banners look slick at first, but I think they just make the site unnecessarily long. Don't need those.
Now, I know nothing about web-design so take all of this for what it's worth, but a general structure like this would be ideal:
Main section 1: Forum-related discussion (with sub-forums for Announcements, Introductions and Tech Support as well as a stickie for the rules)
Main section 2: Belly discussion (with sub-forums for General Talk, Stories, Videos and Pictures, although pictures could also be its own section)
Main section 3: General discussion (doesn't even really need further sub-forums, individual threads devoted to Music, Games, etc. should suffice)
That's just the basic outline, but I like it because there's a clear delineation between fetish stuff and general stuff. The way it is right now I have to go to the Youtube thread in the General discussion section to watch bellybutton videos, which is just a little silly. Because let's face it, at the end of the day we're just people who get off on bellybuttons. If I want to know how to get abs I'm sorry but this board is far from the first place I'd check.
Of course, niche stuff like male celebs or Bollywood pics should get their own sub-forums in the appropriate setions. I can do without a torture section, although it's still a little discriminating. ;) But I get it, you wanna be more mainstream-accessible. An 18+ section is always a good idea, though.
Lastly, we need a group chat. And not the kind that's integrated into the front page, that would just make it even messier and people would only half-heartedly use it. But if you link to a chatroom somewhere at the top of the page people will make that commitment "Alright, I'm gonna go there now and chat for a while". The group chats were the absolute best thing about Belly Love and really helped fuse the community together. I'm not promising it will work again, but I'd probably spend more time on there than on the actual boards. Joed, one of the coolest members ever, pretty much exclusively posted in the chatroom.
That's just my 2 rubels.