Your Forum Review
First Impressions & Appearance
When a potential user visits your forum, you want them to have the best first impressions as possible. Honestly, my first impressions weren't the best, but they were actually pretty good. There are many things that could be improved though, I will try my best to help you with these things. To start, I really like your theme. I don't like the default theme's color scheme, so I am glad that you have an assortment of color schemes of the theme available for use. I personally think style 8 is the best fitting for your forum's default theme though. It seems to fit your forum's genre the most and the color scheme is light, which is preferred by most, I believe. The theme itself is professional though, and fits your forum nicely. Secondly, I like your favicon. It's great because it fits well with your awesome logo. That brings me to thirdly, your logo is very nice. It's an attractive logo; it looks like it has a bit of symbolism in it. The key is unlocking the lock. You could say that the key is unlocking the lock to being a successful administrator through tips, tricks, discussion, guides, etc. I think you could do better with the "Reset" and "Top" links at the bottom of the forum though. I think they should be icons or something. How it is now, the two links seem really out of place and a a bit random even. I think "Mark forums read'" would be better off to only be in the Main Menu. No need to have it directly above the forum as well. Overall, your forum has an attractive appearance and I had pretty good first impressions when I visited your forum.
(Score: 17/20)
Site Layout
Your layout isn't too long. You have a total of fifteen boards. It seems like much more though for some reason. Your forum is young, you don't need fifteen boards right now. I know webmasters have a lot to talk about, thus means a lot of boards may be somewhat needed, but don't be afraid to use sub-boards. You should tone your board count to twelve or so. I think you should go through and merge some boards in the Admin Alley. Personally I think boards like "Social Networking" and "Search Engines & SEO" could be made sub-boards in "Websites & Webhosting." You could also merge "Forum Discussion" and "Blogging" into "Forum & Blog Discussion," or something similar. I also don't think Feedback should be hidden as a sub-board in the "Announcements" board. It says it's for announcements, so it really should only be for announcements. You'll get more feedback if you give it its own board or make it a sub-board in the "Welcome Wagon." That may sound a bit strange, but think about it, when new members join your forum, they will have those first impressions. When they go to post an introduction, they will be sure to see the feedback sub-board and I think they would likely go ahead and post their first impressions in the feedback sub-board. I'm also not so sure if the "Premium Products" board is necessary. It will be impossible to keep that board active, so it doesn't need it's own board. I think that would be okay just having its own thread or sub-board in the "Member Promotion" board. I am a bit confused by the "Offsite Promotion" board. You claim that the service is copyrighted to Admin Access? It's not. You say it's unique, but honestly, I saw that on a promotion forum a few months ago. I think that forum is now dead, but the service isn't copyrighted, and you can't claim that it is. Lastly, I think you should get rid of the huge "Admin Exclusive VIP" thing. That is really unnecessary. It makes the page length much longer than it should be. I think you should really get rid of that and just have a link to the VIP Exclusive Membership thread on the Main Menu or User Menu. That will probably make it just as noticeable as it was before, but not damaging to your forum like it is doing now. Overall, I like your layout, but there are some improvements and adjustments you really need to make.
(Scored 15/20)
Statistics and Activity
As of right now, your forum has accumulated 735 posts, 199 topics, and 44 members. Your forum had it's official opening on June 30th. Seeing the topic dates and such, I am assuming that some people (staff members, etc) had access to the forum before then. It's good to see that you were able to get discussion going before you opened the forum, I see so many forums opening prematurely and having empty boards, few topics, etc. You seem to really know what you are doing. Just from that, I can tell you are an experienced webmaster. Those some nice statistics. I especially love the 199 topics statistic. It shows me that you and your staff team are trying to generate discussion. There are recent posts in most boards. There are still those boards that aren't getting much activity though. You should try your best to have activity spread out. There are a few boards that have not had a post in about a week. You should try your best to have all the boards with new content every twenty-four hours or so. Considering your forum's age, I think this would be the perfect time to have a cool contest or competition, that you can post in boards on those webmaster and promotion forums like FP's "What is going on?" board. The prize doesn't have to be anything special. A small cash prize or top-leading domain would do the trick. That would really attract new members. Overall, I am loving the discussion that's being generated. There are some interesting webmaster conversations going on your forum.
(Scored 19/20)
Staff Moderation
Based off of your forum's legend and "The team" page, your forum has a total of seven staff members. One is an administrator (you). That is obviously all the administrators you need, unless you were to need a technical administrator, I don't think you need one though. You have two global moderators. That's all you need as of right now. Why do their rank icons say "Moderator" on them? Are they global moderators or simply moderators? I think you should decide whether you plan to call them global moderators are moderators. You may think that's not very important, but that could get a bit confusing. Then, finishing off your staff team, you have four promoters. That is a bit unnecessary. A staff group that specializes in promoting isn't needed, and having four people in it is definitely not needed. I am against keeping the group, but if you want to keep it, I think you should at least narrow the group down to one or two. Promoting is a pretty straight-forward job, you don't need any more than that. You have seven staff members now. Your forum is young, you're better off only have three or four staff members for now.
(Scored 13/20)
Spelling/Grammar & Professionalism
The whole staff team seems to be posting with great professionalism. Especially you, I am a member on your forum, and I have really loved reading your posts so far. You post with excellent spelling, grammar, and professionalism. Your posts are an enjoyment to read, you are setting a great example to the rest of the community on how they should post. One thing I have noticed about Fluffybunny is that his posts seem to be a bit repetitive. They are of high quality, but in the Welcome Wagon board for instance, he posts "Welcome to the forums." If he's going to copy and paste his replies to introductions, I think he should go a bit more in depth about it. Even if it's just something like "Hello, my name is Fluffybunny, it's very nice to meet you, welcome to Admin Access!" it makes a huge difference. It's also good to go a bit personal when welcoming them, for example, if their introduction says the like or dislike something, tell them your opinion on that particular subject as well. That goes a bit personal and is great for forming friendship and sparking the curiosity of new members. Just like Curious George, curiosity gets the best of us. That curiosity can really get them to continue posting on your forum. The board descriptions are excellent, they are in depth and they explain things very well. I only see a couple errors. One is that you don't have a period at the end of the Announcements board description. I then noticed an error in your "Member Promotion" board description. At the beginning of the last sentence, "Its" should be "It's." Overall, well done on this!
(Scored 18/20)
Total Score - 82/100
Final Remarks
Admin Access looks like a great new administrator forum with some very nice discussion going. Keep everything going as planned (but still keep those recommended improvements and adjustments in mind; the ones you receive from the community, reviews (like this one), etc and your forum will be sure to find success.
Strong Points
The excellent activity so far and the professionalism shown by the staff team throughout the forum.
Things to Improve
Lowering the amount of staff members and minor improvements to the layout.
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