Open Carnage - Review Spotlight
Open Carnage
Full Review by Jadster
You can access Open Carnage to see for yourself what it looks like, by clicking here.
Scoring:
First Impressions & Appearance – (13 out of 20)
Let me start of this review by giving out my personal thoughts on Open Carnage. When I visited OC, I was a bit confused as to what OC was all about. I looked at just the theme and banner but could not figure it out at all. The banner / logo really confused me as to what the site was about but after I read the blue box underneath the header, then I found out what OC was all about and realized it was a gaming related website. Personally, I found that a bit disappointing that I had to read a notice to find out what the site was about. If anything, I would say that your banner / logo should represent your website & have some sort of inclination as to what your site is about. This way, people won't have to go and read to find out what the site is about. Looking at your theme, for a gaming website, I feel that a dark theme was a good choice as you don't see very many light themed gaming sites that work well but I feel that a dark theme works best for gaming websites. The color of your logo seems very nice but with a space background behind it is what threw me off because I didn't see how that connected with gaming in any way. Overall, I feel that the banner / logo should show more about what OC is about and you could add a bit more to the theme to help with that as well. So, let's move onto the Site Layout of Open Carnage!
Site Layout – (15 out of 20)
Let's look at the site layout of Open Carnage now. When looking at your categories & boards, I can say that they are pretty well organized. You have a good amount of categories and a good amount of boards in each of those categories to keep them filled up and keep things spread out so you don't have too many boards in a category or too few. As for navigation around OC, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the navigation. It is very easy and simple to navigate and find things around OC. So overall, I do not see what is wrong with your site layout and your site organization is good. And again, navigation through the website is very simple and easy. So let's move onto the next part of your review, the statistics & activity.
Statistics and Activity – (16 out of 20)
As it stands, Open Carnage has 50,926 posts but the amount of threads are unknown. You also have 305 members which if we were to average those numbers, you would have about 167 posts per user which is a great number! With that many members with an average of that many posts per user, that is outstanding! By far, this is the highest Post per User ratio I have ever seen by far. Looking at the activity though, it is hard to tell how active people are because you have the time limit as "In the past 30 minutes", so it is hard to rate how your activity is when it is reset every 30 minutes. But looking at the stats every 30 minutes, with 14 guests & 2 members, that is great activity for Open Carnage. But again, without a larger window, it is hard to tell the activity of your website. Overall, I think that the stats & activity are by far one of the biggest positives of Open Carnage by far, so let's move onto the content of your website!
Content – (16 out of 20)
Looking at the content of Open Carnage, I would have to say that your website holds a lot of good, quality content. With all the members that you have and all the posts, your content is skyrocketing through the roof along with the stats. But after reading some of the content that is posted around Open Carnage, I can tell that a good amount of time is put into the content to make it very detailed and provide quality information to the community of Open Carnage. I read several threads in the News Room and each and every thread that I read had quality information and each one had links back to the original source which is very professional. Showing where the information originally came from instead of ripping it off of them makes the site show professionalism. So overall, I would have to say that the only thing that brings down your site content would be small posts, such as 1 liners or single words. If you can minimalism that, you will get much higher and go much further with Open Carnage. So let's move onto the last bit of this review, the professionalism and spelling / grammar of OC.
Spelling/Grammar & Professionalism – (16 out of 20)
Looking at Open Carnage and all the content that I read through, your site has some great content and the spelling / grammar was near perfect but wasn't there just yet but that is to be expected, nothing is ever perfect. By far, the best grammar & spelling came from the staff members which isn't a huge surprise. Most of your members are good with spelling & grammar in their posts but every now and then there are errors which isn't a huge deal to be honest. And looking at how professional your site is, seeing how active your staff are and how proper their posts are, they are very professional with what they do. They make your website look very professional which in the end will help benefit your website in the long run. This will keep members around and bring new ones in as well. So overall, I would have to say your site is very professional and your site has great grammar & spelling by far. So that is all for this review, now let's finish this up with my final remarks & your strengths & weaknesses.
Total Score - (76 out of 100)
Final Remarks: Open Carnage was a great site to get the time to review. I enjoyed taking the time to review Open Carnage and getting to read some of the threads and articles you posted, especially in the News Center. So by far, this was a very interesting gaming website to review to say none the less. But anyways, thank you very much for requesting a review here at FP and I hope to be able to review OC again in the future!
Strengths:
- Stats & Activity
- Professionalism
Weaknesses:
- Site Logo / Banner
