Um, not to sound harsh or anything, but what's so special about making a skin for vBulletin? There's really very little design going on when you take an existing format and basically add pictures.
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The color scheme is more logically consistent in the second design. It's hard to say more until I know what you're going to put in each section. ;)

Functionality is a part of the design though. Nobody comes up with a pretty layout that is hard to use and calls it good design. However, beyond making the content easy to follow, a few basic rules...

That's such a common style though. While it's effective and elegant, I was going for something a little more open and unconventional.

> I would suggest that simplicity can still be attractive
Oh, I agree completely. But don't assume that I either don't like colors, or don't know how to use them just because one of my designs leans...

> You have a horizontal scrollbar in ff
That's on my list of things to tweak

> You also need some padding on the part where it says 'central nexus'.
Indeed. Thanks.

> A bit of colour wouldn't...

Too slow. As in, long enough for me to consider leaving and going somewhere else. But if you want exact numbers, about 9 seconds to get to a stable loading point, and I'm on cable.

It looks good, but loads waaaaay too slowly for the design you're going for.

It looks nice, but the header image takes forever to load under Firefox, and doesn't seem to load at all for IE.

Dogtree Studios (http://www.inlandseafood.com/dogtree/)

This is the preliminary design for my own personal web site. I'm most interested in a critique of the design (sparse for a reason!) and how...