just an idea...

I don't believe on structured areas on forums. I opine this not for me, is for all the users, specially for novices. Example:
If i only read the Thecnical Area messages, i will not read Novices Areas, so i will not help (or receive help by other artists).
I know, if i'm a artist, there's no reason to access in all areas, but, in time, surelly i will not access to all areas.
Btw, Wincustomize is large, but not too large to separate in areas.

What about just two categories?

One for help/suggestions/tech support and another for general chat.

Though, the current message board isn't busy enough to need splitting into categories.

Of course, another site I visit has split into 50+ messageboards, the fastest on which (which has a 100 root topic list) the new messages are off the bottom of the list within 10 minutes because there are so many posts.

This is just my opinion, but I like the current setup. When I go to other websites that have 10 different message boards it's really overwhelming. I tend to not visit any of them since I'd usually want to visit all of them and that's cumbersome since they're all separate. Another bonus with this setup is that I end up reading and sometimes posting in other 'categories' that I never would have had they been separated.

Lastly, in a sense there is a distinction between general discussion and technical support. To my way of thinking, this board covers the general discussion and the StarDock newsgroups cover the support aspect.

I *hate* messagboard categories. It is only good if you are gonna ignore the posts on particular topics. Takes twice as long to browse, and it adds another level of clickthrough. Sure, if you are gonna have 200 jillion set topics, like at devart, it might be good on resources. Here, though, there's more of a focus, and it would just be another page to load, (and pay for), before you get to what you want.

I personally don't thing there's enough interaction on the boards at the moment to warrant new categories.

I think the messageboard worth great as it is, and does it job perfectly.

I like the board just as it is. One thing I would like to see is people putting better subject descriptions on their posts. Some of them could mean anything, so I ignore them...

Fuzzy, yes, that's always a problem....'Help!!!' doesn't really 'help'....[bit of a pun, that]...
The board works just fine at the moment, but it would be 'nice' to see a little better specific titling of threads....

BTW....
'Just an idea....' would be better as 'Just an idea for the MB'...

One thing I would definitely like to see would be making it possible from threads to split into sub-threads newsgroup style.

Subthreads won't happen...they're a pain in the butt to negotiate. What this board has is a semblance of sanity....