Advertising Mania

The Reverend

Paragon
Joined
Apr 10, 2011
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1,905
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Name of Forum: Advertising Mania
Forum Link: http://advertisingmania.info/am
Type of Review ( Quick Review / Forum Review / Blog Review ): Forum Review
Date Forum Opened: December 15 2009
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Your Forum Review



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First Impressions & Appearance

The first thing I notice when I load your forum is the banner at the top. The little image of the guy is pretty cool, but the text on the banner could use a little work in my opinion. The blue text is very hard to read against the blue background. I would recommend using either a different color entirely or a lighter shade of blue. The rest of your theme looks pretty good and professional. I noticed a small problem with your forum. At the top of the forum, there is something that says "{myadvertisements[zone_1]}." This appears to be a small coding error.

On the activity side, your forum looks pretty good. You have a good amount of posts and members at first glance. However, I notice a few empty forums on your index. I understand that these are service forums, but any empty forums on the index could look bad to prospective members. You may wish to make a couple topics in each of those forums even if they're just rule threads or something of that nature.

Overall, though, your forum looks decent at first glance.
(Score: 16/20)

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Site Layout

In my opinion, your forum layout has some issues. The category on your forum with the most forums is Coffee Lounge with eight forums. The next largest category has five forums. This alters the balance of your forum's layout and places the emphasis on your general discussion forums rather than on your primary forums. Aside from the balance issue, I think that you could eliminate some forums and use categories more efficiently than you are now.

Starting from the top, I think that you should hide the Basket forum from regular users. I think that it's unnecessary for users to see topics in that forum. You could argue that some users might want to read old posts, but it appears that you're mostly just moving spam posts there.

Secondly, I don't think that you need to have the feed from Google Webmaster Central on your index. You could simply make a sticky topic in one of your other forums with a link saying that it's a great resource for webmasters looking for tips.

I would also recommend turning your Promotion category into a forum and turning the forums that are currently in the category into sub-forums under it. You could place the Promotion forum in your Services category.

I also would recommend turning your Graphics category into a forum or a couple forums since each forum doesn't seem to get a ton of activity (except the requests). You could place the new forum(s) under Exchanges or Administration Discussions.

In the Coffee Lounge forum, I think that you need to move things around a bit. I would put Debates, LOL Street, and Posting Games under General Discussion as sub-forums. After that, I would put the Literature forum under Media Discussions as a sub-forum. This will dramatically reduce the number of forums and categories on your index and make your forum much easier to navigate.
(Scored 11/20)

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Statistics and Activity

According to my calculations, your forum receives between fifteen and twenty posts per day, and you have about fifteen posts for each of your 847 members. Your forum isn't dead, but there is still quite a bit of room for improvement in your activity. I think that you need to increase the amount of advertising you are doing now. Using the services on Forum Promotion may help. Also, post exchanges may help for a while just so that you have a greater supply of new posts being added each day. That will look good to prospective members who see your forum. You might also look around Forum Promotion for some tips regarding SEO and advertising. There are some valuable guides on here. In addition to that, make sure you are promoting on as many promotion forums as possible. People who are on promotion forums usually like to join more than one, so I can almost guarantee that you can get at least a few members from advertising on several promotion forums.
(Scored 9/20)

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Staff Moderation

Your forum currently has eight staff members. I think that you may be overstaffed for your current activity level. I can understand having at least one person on each service team, but you have three administrators and two moderators as well. This is a bit superfluous in my opinion. In addition, almost every single one of your staff members has less than one post per day. This is a problem because your staff members should be creating new content to stimulate discussion. Your staff members also do not seem to welcome new members. You have eight staff members, and most of the introduction topics only get one or two replies. You need to talk to your staff members about their activity. If their activity can't be improved, then it may be time to let them go. For your current activity level, I would recommend having one staff member on each service team and no more than two other staff members. Any more than that is too much in my opinion.
(Scored 3/20)

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Spelling/Grammar & Professionalism

I think that your forum descriptions could use a bit of work. All of them are pretty short sentences, and some of them don't have full stops at the end. Descriptions are one of the first things new members see, so making them as good as they can be is important in my opinion. I would recommend rewriting them. Make sure they thoroughly describe what should be posted in each forum. Descriptions can help your forum stand out to members as well. Using a bit of creativity goes a long way.
(Scored 11/20)

Total Score - 50/100


Final Remarks

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Strong Points

You have a good theme.
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Things to Improve

You really need to improve the activity of your staff members. That is the first step in improving your forum's activity.
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