WHO THINKS LETSRUN DOESN'T NEED A "RE-DESIGN"!!

look at craigslist. its the most popular job listing site and it has a very letsrun-esque design

with the logo, if the black outline was made thicker and bolder it would make it look better without needing to change anything else, although maybe all capital letters would look better too.

LETSRUN.COM

maybe get rid of the underline

brojos,

I am sort of thinking about entering this contest, but am curious about the underlying LR application layer (as light as that may be). A few questions:

Is it just flat files and a message board app?

is the message board app even still maintained by its author?

how secure is the LR server, currently (say on a scale of 1 to 10)?

To the site "owners": The site is obviously rudimentary..rough at the edges..no frills...not everything works on a consistent basis. Polish is not big with this group. However, don't commit the classic mistake of not consulting your clients before revamping...Something has to be working when its such a popular site...Don't assume you know what has to change...Spend some money on focus groups and on an on-line survey...Good luck!

Brojo can say all he wants but here's the original post from trackjabber that precipitated this:

-Are you sick of not having the ability to make picture attachments or add basic formatting to your posts?

-Are you tired of spambots taking over your forum?

-Are you sick and tired of seeing a blank black screen every other time you visit your forum because the forum has been hacked or spammed to death?

-Do you love having a ridiculously simple forum format?

-Do you want to continue posting anonymously?

Then go to

http://www.trackjabber.com

We have all the benefits of letsrun while providing many added benefits. In a nutshell, we have a shockingly simplistic interface that permits both registered and anonymous posting while still providing must-have formatting options, enhanced security, and measures to prevent spambot attacks.

The best case scenario is that the site takes off, the worst case scenario is that it forces the Brojos to finally bring letsrun in to the 19th or 20th century. Even if you intend to stay on letsrun, come on over and post the next time (probably tomorrow!) letsrun deletes your post, they get bombarded with viagra spam, or you go to the forum and get a blank black page.

I think there are two main issues with the navigability of the LetsRun.com.

First, for first-time visitors, the messageboard link is practically invisible. Just make that more clear, and separate it from the clutter on that left column. (Do you even need that left column?)

Second, since you don't like how far under the fold the news goes, you can either make it so any story older than "two weeks ago" or something automatically goes to the archives, or you can just put dates on your stories.

Don't remove information from the site, don't add unnecessary fancy features. Just make the MESSAGEBOARD link more visible (right at the top center under the quote of the day in big letters?) and add dates to the stories if you're worried about readers getting lost in the clutter.

One of my favorite features of the site is that I always find some new article I hadn't read yet because everything is scattered across the three columns. This is one of the great sites on the internet, including the messageboard, which should not change at all except for the search function.

how about something along these lines?

www.thecassidyfeed.com

That layout is not as nice though. Why do we need to know who did the last post? It's too spread out.