I have realised over the last couple of days that I have built a forum from scratch. It does not, however have the look of most forums. Please could I have your opinions as to whether you prefer my layout or a standard type forum approach. My site is myverdict.net

sorry, i may be an idiot but can you post the exact url of it. I can't seem to find the forum.

The url is www.myverdict.net. Access to the 'forum' is by following the 'questions' link from the homepage. You may have spotted an obvious problem, if the site is difficult to recognise as a forum.

I like it. Most forums are overcrowded and yours is clean and easy to follow. One thing you might change is the font-size of the text in the cells that display the number of votes.

Thank you kkeith29. I'll adress that font size when I redesign with css over the next two weeks.

Well, it's definetly not "crammed"

As a suggestion... maybe Votes Cast at the front of the number groups?

re do the text sizes (*reminder*)

Though not crammed, there is a lot of space being "wasted" inside the boxes... maybe a little more Css control and apply some space between the rows instead - this will help bring a little more content into the page view area whilst not jamming everything up!

Thanks for your comments autocrat. When you say 'Votes Cast at the front of the number groups', do you mean before 'for', 'against', etc.

Yup...
Total - Type A, Type B and Type C...
makes it somewaht easier to start with the total and then see the breakdown (at least, to me it does No gaurentee for the others out there).

I like the standard forum layout better.

I think I like a more traditional layout, But your layout is very clean. I agree about the font size being small, you should definitly make that bigger.

I think maybe you could a dd one post at the top that explains how your forum works. Like they do on this site or other forums.

Good luck!