1. Navigation And Structure: #1 change the fonts, the text looks like it was printed with a printer that has a dirty print head, more ink on one side of some letters, and missing parts of other letters,
#2 having a two tier forum is a bad idea, i.e. free forum and paid membership forum, it means you do not have all the info open to all of the people. get rid of the paid member forum and offer the paying members something else. it is not an elite club as any tramp can walk in with $20 he found on see more the street, at the end of the day he's still a tramp, and the food is the same, just less fingers touching the buffet table. (if you see what i mean).

#3 part of the main issue with the forums is that you update often and the posts/questions being asked are not always about the current version, this makes the search function a little less useful of the version number is not in the thread or posts, and this alone counts for 75% of the frustration of new members because they try to do an edit and find that it was for 5.6 not 6.0.0002. ot get frustrated because the code they have found in a thread, was written about an older version and they can not find the code on the php file that the old thread talks about.
i propose making a new forum for each version # as dolphin advances, so would the forums, they would be a time line of useful threads for that version #
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Buyer And Seller Protection:
#1 an escrow is a must for high value deals, anything under $50 just makes it cost to much to use. remember you have to have staff able to resolve or intermediate between 2 people if a dispute is made.
#2 blatant rip off's of people work should be removed, but having said that, there is only a limited number of ways to write a line of code. Copyright protection is given to anyone that can prove they wrote the code for a mod, and that is the way for coders to go to remove someone thats copied their work, its a criminal act so use the law, boonex is not a copyright lawyer nor trading standards office. you have the law on your side, coders should use it.

boonex should make a comment section on services paid for, just like mods. but this can be open to abuse, so the services need to be paid for via the expertxxx site just like the mod downloads, one service one comment. this would prevent rival coders/service providers from leaving negative comments to discredit their competition, without paying for something.

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3. SPAM:

wow well where to start here?
I was a global admin for a student centre for 3 years, we had 6 global admin, 150 chat admin and 75 forum Moderators, with 800,000 members
now i can talk all day about how to run a forum but thats not what you want to do, you need to choose Moderators carefully, you need to also have on hand someone online to oversee any abuse or even mass deletion some pissed off Moderator might take too because they flipped. and trust me Moderators can flip like anyone else.

before you appoint any Moderators, you need to draw up a set of rules and policies that both members and Moderators are clear about, and both have to follow.
spam needs to be defined and abusive content/posts needs to be removed. what also needs to be in place is a complaint person to complain to about Moderators actions.
one major flaw with most forums is that Moderators appear unaccountable to the members. so any Moderator actions should be clear, i.e. "post deleted by Moderator Boonex for violation of spam policy"
this give everyone a clear picture of who the mod was and why they took the actions they did. the deleted post should be removed to a hidden forum for staff only, with the Moderators post replacing it on the forum. this make it 100% abuse proof by either members or Moderators, as there is a solid record of the members posts and Moderation records

choosing Moderators is something you'll have to do yourself, and choosing one or two admin over them is a wise choice too.

all should be on a 3 month probation period so you are not stuck with anyone that you later regret after a week or month or two.

someone thats on the site 12 hours a day does not always mean they will make a good Moderator, someone thats on maybe 1 hour a day can be the best Moderator you have. it's a fine line between choosing the right one and the wrong one. but one bit of advice i would give here. choose many Moderators, do not give any one Moderator more than 2 forums to deal with. split the work between many people and you build much more of a community spirit and team, all working to one goal, a better forum for all.

i would choose 4 for each forum, giving all 4 of them 2 forums each i.e.
Installation and Setup and
Troubleshooting
would all have the same 4 Moderators.
the same would go for:
Modifications and
Styles and templates.

see what i am getting at?
and yes by appointing people that are coders on those area's is a bonus as they are also more likely to reply to threads they also Moderate.

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4. Support Via Forums:

see #3 Spam i address a lot of this in that part.
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5. Features:

once the mods and admin are in place, you need a report post button near the vote +- buttons to allow members to report posts direct to admin/mods

again i address much of this in my above comments

Sammie xXx