new forum here, Criticism is much appreciated

[GreenPassion]

My forum is just three months old.
I knew exactly....nothing about vbulletin prior to starting this forum.
I now know, slightly more than nothing.

My forum is based on the responsible medical and non-medical use of marijuana.

In three months, I have achieved:
Threads: 2,074, Posts: 20,742, Members: 626
I don't think that's too bad, of course I want more.

I even have some paying advertisers already.

All modifications to the appearance was done by myself...in a hurry! lol

www.greenpassion.org

Please feel free to comment. I'd love to get some true feedback.

[blkdrgn]

I dont really care to look around that site....but i will tell you that the bottom where the copyright info is is way to cluttered.

[Bogo]

I think the site looks pretty good, like blkdrgn said its a little cluttered at the bottom.

[GreenPassion]

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I placed the paragraph at the bottom of the page using lots of keywords, thinking it would help with my search engine rankings.

Am I wrong?

[Felix]

It's not my kind of forum, but it does look nice. The colours are rather tasteful, sophisticated and it looks professional overall.

I do agree about the bottom still looking a bit cluttered with the copyright information. I'd break that up visually just a bit is all. It seems that you removed the keywords that you mentioned previously, as well. Good.

I really like that left aligned area with the module cells for advertising or whatever. Overall it looks really good. Nice job.

[MetalPrincess]

Ok as a designer I'll put my 2 cents in. I personally do not like the skin at all. The banner is very nice but the skin could match it much better. The icons are cool and work but just the skin is not doing anything for me Otherwise the site is fine. I am personally confused about the stuff in the footer that everyone is talking about. I don't see extra stuff, so I'm guessing you took it out.

Now to answer your question, yes & no. Yes its a good idea to have your keywords on the front page somewhere but no a paragraph in the footer would most likely be annoying as pointed out. What you might want to do instead is use the names of your forums and categories as your keywords, or change them to reflect your keywords. Its a way around it. Also there are some pretty nifty hacks out there for SEO for vb Just look around for them

MP