SITE REVIEW: Review my new Work From Home forum

Please review my new Work From Home Discussion Forum at http://www.WorkFromHomeBoard.com. The forum was launched about a month ago. I had to change the style a couple of times before settling for this latest skin. What do you guys think about the style of the forum, the categories, the layout, etc...
Any suggestions/critique would be appreciated.

Thanks

I love it! Who designed your forum?

The notepad background was cool, I actually didn't even notice it until I got to the bottom and saw the ripped off paper graffic. It seems like there are an awful lot of topics, and lots of scrolling down down down just to see the entire page. Is there any way you could condense a few topics into one? Like maybe put the "Getting started working at home", the "work at home scams", and the "general home based business discussions" all into one topic, and then put all the web design/SEO and data entry topics into one, then put the stock market and currency exchange all into one. That way visitors won't have to spend a long time looking all over for just the right topic to post a question or something on.

edited for noodle finger spelling errors, woops!

Agreed. There would seem like little participation with all that too specific general topics out on the board. I mean that like lets say web design. We make a topic forum for each HTML, CSS... and under programming C++, Perl, PHP... when you could combine them into one like in this forum. Not to confuse you, I'm not saying you have them, I said that for an example.

Otherwise, you got a great idea for the forum. It is bound to expand throughout it's life.

The design is very neat and nice. i have no problem navigate around. The only thing i would comment is the right hand section title font style is a bit difficult to read.

the notebook design was interesting but the black background takes away from it, what about making the notebook a tad smaller and instead of the black background put something like an old school desk (brown) with scratches or whatever kids carv into desks, or something else. I like the notebook thing but I feel you need to "light it up" better

Also the top right ad takes away from the notebook theme and the title on the top left should be changesd to a little yellow sticky pad memo paper or something that matches the notebook

You have a great design and I love it because of the interesting categories

It doesn't look that great. Contrast is too high, and I don't know what it, but it doesn't look profesionaly. Maybe change colors, use a more friendly color scheme.

I don't think black against white is too much contrasting, or do you mean the blue links against the white background? That too, is not too much contrasting. And what do you mean it doesn't look "profesionaly"?

The only thing that I dislike about that scheme is the ad that is over the rings. It hurts the design a little.