[Safin]

what you guys think.. prefer to code a skin yourself or buy it..(which is diff from having a custom made skin designed)

While we do have two paid skins also, i always think that having a own custom skin, even if not that grt is always a good idea.. it makes your board stand out a bit and thats most important.

Plus if you look at most of the so called "great looking" themes, there c2c ratio is also very poor meaning bad for seo. element skin is good in that but can't say about the extremepixels one the same thing.

What are you guys opinions on this..

[KingSpade]

I've joined plenty of forums having only pre-designed styles, such as here at TSL (although it has been modified). I feeling having a unique style shows you are working to better your forum and make it more visually appealing, although content is key.

I don't really care if the forum design is a work of art or not, if there's no content, even a little to get things started, I'll wait.

[Michael]

If you have the money then certainly use it.

This way you are certain to get a more unique forum brand image which in itself can attract more members and guests to your forum. It is all about buying into an image, a belief an idea that this forum can help you, improve you, or change your forum (in this instance)