Large Forum Review
First Impressions
When I first arrive at your forum I am hit by a huge burst of colour, advertise hotspot is a very fitting name for your forum. Personally I find the theme far too strong for my liking and had I not been reviewing this forum I would have closed the window pretty quick. My eye focuses on the logo straight away, which is great. This is something that all forums should aim for as the logo usually informs the visitor what the site is all about, which your logo definitely does. I am clearly given the option of logging in or registering on your forum and the theme becomes much easier to view after a few minutes. One thing I notice as I am on quite a slow internet connection is that you have used a base colour of a very strong yellow and this is what causes most of the blinding feeling before the actual background image has been collected from the server, something you should look into and consider for users with slow internet. Your theme is very heavy and utilises many graphics and large images which is something you should take into account when it comes to loading speeds.
I like the way your theme has used diagonal lines and such, it is something you don’t see on many forums but a lot of the lines are very pixelated or grungy looking which is something that you need to work on. As a first time visitor to your site I expect to see some type of content that makes me want to continue reading. Even on a large screen I am unable to see any of your board as the top section is so big, a smaller logo area or removing the ad would help this. Overall I would expect a lot more of a WOW effect to want to join your forum. There is nothing about your top area that makes me feel that your forum is unique, which is something you need to work on considering the competition there is in your niche.
(Score: 7/15)
Appearance
As I already mentioned, you have a very bright and strongly coloured theme. This is something that users will either love or hate, personally I don’t really like it. When reading on forums, especially topics that are longer I want it to be easy on the eyes so that I can focus on the content, not on defining the words. This is something I don’t feel is possible on your forum due to the contrast in colour. When you create a theme for your forum you usually choose a colour scheme to work with and then have another scheme breaking colour which you use for text. When viewing your forum I see browns, oranges, yellows and strong contrasts with white. There is just far too much going on colour wise. I suggest you consider toning down the theme and choosing a colour scheme which only contains 1-2 colours.
I feel that you have tried to mix many different styles of board when creating this theme which in some cases works and some cases clashes far too much. You have chosen to use a lot of embossing, which then has a very negative effect when you use a framing/shadow system to box in the titles on the section header bar. I would much rather see a single bar here that just has text on it, the way it is now the boxes draw too much attention to themselves and I hardly see the boards the section contains, which is actually the important thing. Looking at the actual board boxes these work quite well, but I do feel the font is a bit too small on the descriptions; I don’t want to have to squint to read them. I don’t feel that the board titles need to be underlined either; this is another thing that makes the descriptions look smaller.
The board markers are very small and don’t really match the rest of the theme, I feel that suns or flames of some sort would be much more suitable. Increasing the size of them a little wouldn’t help either. I don’t really feel that you need an RSS feed button on each individual board.
What I really like about your theme is actually the bottom section. First off the diagonal footer which really melts into the theme, it’s something a bit different and works really well. I also like the way you have centred the statistics area, this is something I haven’t seen done before. Overall I really like your theme, purely for the reason that you have strayed outside of the comfort zone of phpBB themes. You have tried something different which has worked in many ways and not as well in other ways; with some work I believe this theme could be very good. Just don’t forget slow loading speeds!
(Score: 16/20)
Statistics and Activity
Your forum has been open for 2 years, 1 month. In that time you have gained 87963 posts which gives you an average of 3500 posts per month which is very impressive. This is something you should be very happy with and from what I can see on your board is mostly organic posts, very well done. Your members have an average of 70 posts each, which for a 2 year old forum isn’t as good. This is something you need to work on, getting members posting more and staying on for a longer period of time. As a new visitor to your site when I view the board for the latest posts then not many are from today, which doesn’t show much for day to day activity. For a forum with this amount of posts and members I would expect to see a lot more daily activity.
It is your staff that needs to help you work on boosting activity. You may already have some kind of guidelines in place for this, but if not you should have a discussion with your staff on what they feel should be done and how they can help with activity.
(Score: 15/20)
Ratios
Looking over your board there is a very un-even spread of posts on the board with an over-whelming amount of posts in the red corner, which is your introduction board. I can understand that members greet new members, but if you have a cash supply per post here I suggest you turn it off; you want your members posting on the actual forum. The secret of administration board is pretty well balanced, even if the tips and tricks is lacking compared to the other boards. I believe you should look into splitting up the Forum Discussions board as I find it hard to find what I am looking for due to the amount of topics, maybe having one board for Forum Administration and one for Daily running of forums would be an idea. Discuss this with your staff. The name The other sides doesn’t tell me much what sort of section this is, a new title along the lines of Exchanges or something would work better in my opinion. Here the spread of posts is much better. Again, the everything else section is a bit of an odd name, something I again feel you should change. The posting games have a huge post count compared to the rest of the forum which is never ever a good sign. It gives me the impression that people aren’t interested in the discussions which are on your forum, you should work on boosting discussion in other areas instead.
You currently have 4 administrators which I feel is a bit much considering the amount of posts you are getting, I feel it would be enough with 2. You only have 1 moderator though, which isn’t much. 3 packagers is plenty for a forum of this size, but considering that you have been forced to close the package section then I feel you could do with a couple more packagers. I believe this forum would do well with 2 administrators, 3 moderators and 4-5 packagers at this current time.
(Score: 6/10)
Content
Your announcements are lengthy and very well written. There are some small grammatical errors in them though, you often miss punctuation and use punctuation in the wrong place. This is a common error on forums though as it is easy to type as you speak and not with proper written English. Running your announcements through a word processor should solve this issue.
The About Us page is very well written and informative with a good deal of background information which tells me a lot about your site and its history. The posts your members make are very varied and overall the standard isn’t that great. A lot of your members don’t use any basic punctuation, their grammar is awful and their spelling isn’t much better. I believe this is something that your staff need to work on, staff set the example of a forum and I have seen many posts on your forum where you and your staff post very short answers that aren’t very well written. Members take after their staff.
(Score: 16/20)
Navigation
Navigation wise I don’t have too many issues. You have a menu at the top and the bottom of the forum which makes it easy to browse without too much scrolling. Rules are located on all pages which means no misunderstandings. I was unable to find any links to privacy policies or terms of service which is not good. As a member I need to know my rights on your forum and this information should be available to me at all times. Other than this I can’t comment much as it is easy to navigate your forum.
(Score: 14/15)
Total Score
74/100
Final Remarks
A forum which has many positive aspects but is lacking in many areas. I like the way you are testing the boundaries and trying new things. A forum of the future.
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