The design so far looks pretty sharp. The hard part of course is building a community - do you have any plans / features that you would like to share?

I wish you success, if only because it will draw offtopic posts across the internet to one place.

Its not so much the community part that I'm worried about, but the marketing aspect... getting people to know the place exists in the first place. I think once people who are into off-topic chat actually find the site, they would be pretty inclined to stay.

Feature-wise I think it tops a lot of the forums out there today (note that my opinion maaay be biased lol). Most just use the generic phpBB or vBulletin, which is great if your looking for something very specific, but not so great if your trying to browse for interesting stuff to read. IMO, the system used here at Hacker News, Digg, Reddit, etc., is far better, but again, the limitation I see with that is these aren't so much discussion forums as they are news link networks.

But mainly, I'm hoping the main thing that will draw users is that they can post threads that are just links to other discussions that are interesting. So hopefully the site will become like a hub for off-topic/random/general discussion.

Anywhoo, I'm rambling. Thanks for the review!

Decent layout -- interesting choice of colors. I think you make the black/green work well. Have you experimented with colors other than green?

Sounds kind of like Reddit for discussions, no?

Nope, from the start it was either going to be green or blue, and blue seemed a little too facebook-ish, so we went with the green. But to be honest, we've been so busy with coding the past few months, haven't had much time to do a whole lot of experimenting with different color schemes. That said, layout, design, etc., is what we're going to be focusing on till we launch in mid-August. Any suggestions on that end?

And yep, its pretty much a forum with reddit/digg features. But I don't think its a bad thing... from personal experience, everytime I browse around on a forum, I wish I could just filter by votes instead of the standard "Recent" sorting most forums utilize. And as I mentioned earlier, I think the biggest selling point is that you can post threads that link to interesting threads on other forums/discussions. If you try doing that on most forums these days, its usually an insta-ban :0 (but that's understandable, since they have no self-moderation system, a.k.a. voting, to remove spammy links).

I think its a great idea... when you get users.

Will there be a Digg-like link that forum masters can add to posts? That way people could just, gahBoo it while they're on a forum. That'll add tons of content to your site and bring curious eyes.

Hmmm, very nice idea, I'll definitely have to get that implemented. Thanks Matt!

Quick note: It doesn't launch till August, I know, but any feedback would be much appreciated, as its not too late for me to incorporate changes, etc. Thanks!