Critique please

[fert]

[url=http://www.usnet1.net/forums]link[/url]

[jdforsythe]

1) you should use css instead of tables and spacer images

2) the "headings" which are "captions" in your tables (paintball, general discussion, electronics, etc.) should stick out more than the column headings (forum, posts, last post, etc.).  as it stands now, the sections stand out seperately from each other, but it isn't the section description that stands out as the top of the section, which makes it difficult to discern your content at a glance.  i suggest making the "captions" much bolder and lessening the boldness (contrast) of the column headings, although still keeping the column headings visually seperate from the content below.

3) also the names of the forums themselves blend into the names of the moderators.  there is no color difference and very little size difference to give them an obvious distinction

4) your table (get rid of, see #1) is 800px wide.  this is going to create a horizontal scroll bar on 800x600 monitors, because the vertical scroll bar will take up some of the 800px width.  you should try to bring it down to something safer, say 750px.

5) this one is little and maybe insignificant, but i think you should design your site for the average user and, in general, what they're already used to.  for instance, your login form has transparent (or black, but it's the same effect) background and a red outline, and your submit (login) button has no outline, underline, or anything except for a marginally distinguishable boldness, to distinguish it as a button rather than plain text, as all the other grey text is.  users are used to solid color (normally white, but solid, contrasting color will do the trick) input boxes and buttons that at least resemble buttons (again, links will do, but it's best imo to use button-looking links at the very least).  you should fill in your input boxes (red would be better than white for your design) and put an outline around the submit button.  also you should consider making the button look more like the input boxes than the form text, as it makes more sense from an associative standpoint in the user's mind (it shows the user that, like the input boxes, "this is something i can interact with in this form" unlike the regular text which is just an explanation of [i]how[/i] to interact with the form).

there are my five cents.

[AndyB]

it's a canned open source forum with a canned skin applied.  What's to critique?