<p>Ran out of ideas in finding an ample-sized college audience to test the site on, so I thought that I'd post here. If this is inappropriate, please remove.</p>
<p>Seems to work fine in a controlled environment, but curious to see how it would do with heavier traffic.</p>
<p>The concept is pretty simple... a free and ad-free university bulletin board... post anything school related... posted by people in the school community.</p>
<p>Any suggestions or comments would be awesome :)</p>
<p>If you want a large number of (extremely harsh, IMO) though usually honest critiques about your site, you should try using rev.iew.me</a> · community web page reviewing
Where people will review and test your site for you. But...you should only do so if brave, they're pretty harsh.</p>
<p>IMO, you really need a welcome or some sort of introduction page. If I hadn't read your initial post, I would have had no idea what your site was about and would have left immediately.</p>
<p>Thanks for the suggestions PlattsburghLoser... and I'll look into those sites</p>
<p>In your honest opinion though... would a site like this be useful in the college community? There's a bit of traffic at Arizona State... if you want to see how the site can be used</p>
<p>Oh, I see how it works now.
I think it would definitely be great for freshman or students interested in particular college, it can give student-insight into campus life.
. I know most students (at my school, at least) automatically delete any email from the college, so this could be a good alternative to catching up on events.</p>
<p>My only suggestion would be to make it more user friendly. While the design is simple and straightforward, the content isn't. For example, the categories on the right (inside of a school section) should be made more obvious, I glanced at over them and barely noticed they existed.
You also might want to consider separating upcoming events from forum posts more, either through a physical page difference or design-wise, as they look exactly the same and it's difficult (unless you read the header, which most people tend to skim) which is an event entry and which is a forum post.</p>
<p>I do like the calendar you've included, I think that's great touch.</p>
<p>ETA: Also, one thing I learned about web development: "Always assume your visitors are idiots." Which you are not doing. You really need to explain what everything does, how it works, why it's there and make it as idiot-friendly as possible. </p>
<p>Other than that, I think it will be a very resourceful site.</p>