Your Forum Review
First Impressions & Appearance
When a potential user visits your forum, you want them to have excellent first impressions. I honestly didn't have very good first impressions, but that just means I have more suggestions that can improve your forum. Firstly, I think my poor impressions started with the dark theme. I for one may be a bit bias to light themes as I personally can't stand dark themes, but dark themes just aren't eye candy. I feel at the end of the day it makes sense to have a neutral theme as the default, and then have a dark and a light theme available. Dark themes seem to fit your forum's genre, but I feel your forum's theme is just too dark. There needs to be more color in it. Almost everything seems to be black besides the logo, part of the board icons, and the background seems to be more gray. Secondly, I don't understand the favicon. Does it have anything to do with your forum, or its genre? I'm not too sure. Thirdly, I like your logo. It's nice, especially the blue and purple, but there's still a lot of darkness. Also in my opinion, logs should have transparent backgrounds. With your forum's large header though, there may just be too much empty space if you were to have a transparent background on the logo. Fourthly, I like your ranks I suppose. I'm glad your forum is no longer ripping the "Administrator" rank here. The rank that replaced it looks nice. Why doesn't it match the other ranks though? All the ranks should be from a matching set if possible. Fifthly, I'm not sure how I feel about your menu. It's nice, but it seems to be too "web 2.0ish" even though the theme and logo really seems outdated. The glossy attractive menu looks nice but it really doesn't match your theme, your forum's genre, nor anything really. Even the font on the menu seems to be superior to the rest of the images (and text for that matter) in the theme. Sixthly, I generally don't like side tables, but I feel your side tables are effective. It's good that there's an extra navigator, an affiliates table, a donation table, and the all elusive top posters table. It's really good that there's a couple tables that appeals to the whole social network promoting. As I can easily tell, your forum has a Twitter page and Facebook page. It's good that you have it where members won't see it every time they blink, but they'll still notice it every once in awhile. Seventhly, I like the Facebook log in integration. With so many Facebook users, it's definitely a good tool. I'm pretty sure it's a default Forumotion feature now though? Eighthly, do you really need a chat box? You may want to reconsider it. I have one on my forum, but I for one always seem to regret having it, when I see the chat box conversations that could have potentially been a couple pages in a topic, and still be of high quality. Lastly, I like that you are putting money out trying to hide what your forum is hosted by. It's good that you invested into a domain and copyright removal. Forumotion rips you off though when it comes to those types of things. I'll never really understand the concept of spending money on a free-hosted forum, it kind of takes away the whole point of a forum being free-hosted. If you're going to actually spend money, it would be best if you got real paid (cheap) web hosting. At the end of the day, it would probably cost around the same as it would wasting your money on copyright removal, advertisement removal, etc. Also, you can generate revenue to cover costs if you were to use real paid web hosting. You could add your own advertisements. Overall, improvements are definitely possible, but I like that you seem to be dedicated. Good luck making improvements!
(Score: 14/20)
Site Layout
I'm not a fan of your forum's layout. I don't really have a problem with the side tables, it's just the board layout that I really feel is lacking. Your board layout consists of 28 boards in six categories. With your forum's current activity state, this just isn't necessary. Your forum really needs to start off with a small simple layout, and then as it grows, you can add a couple boards here and there, depending on the activity and the demand. I really dislike how every little thing seems to have it's own board. For example, the off-topic category has nine boards. This could be easily one to three boards instead of nine boards. I feel the first two boards of the category should be merged and then moved to the top category. I think all the media-related boards in the category should be merged into one board, seeing as they're not too active anyways. I think "Forum Games" and "Chatter World" should be sub-boards of "General Discussion." I don't really even feel the "GFX Sanctuary" is necessary. I really doubt the board will be kept active. You just can't expect it to be. It's better off being a sub-board or maybe just going under the topics that can be discussed in the main board of "General Discussion." The four middle categories I feel could be minimized as well, but I understand it's setup. Just about all roleplay forums have a lot of boards. There is a lot to be done in roleplays. I think you could easily turn the four categories into four boards under one category called "Roleplay" though. Then, the boards could have sub-boards in them for each current roleplay board. For example, a board would be called "The Afterlife" and then "Heaven" and "Hell" would be sub-boards of the board. That would really make things much more simple. Now to the "Important Topics" category. I feel "Regulations" doesn't need its own board or sub-board. A couple threads in "Updates & Announcements" will do. I feel you've done all you can to minimize "Character Creations," but you may be able to find a way to utilize the introductions and the character creation in one board. That may not be very neat though. I feel the "Archives" board has little point, but if it's needed then it can be a sub-board in "General Discussion" or "Updates & Announcements" really. It should just be placed out of the way. Maybe the board should be hidden? Lastly, I feel "Advertising" could fit in the final category. It would be the last board in it. I personally feel it's best to get it out of the way of the rest of the forum so the active members who really don't care about what forum is being advertised don't have to endure it. You need to still have it though, as a lot of roleplay forums have link back guidelines. Overall, your forum's board layout has some problems. I hope this helps you find solutions. Good luck.
(Scored 8/20)
Statistics and Activity
As of right now, your forum has accumulated 877 posts by 41 members. Those statistics aren't too bad. They're not that good though because your forum has been open since August 18th, 2011. When you average out your posts to member ratio, you end up with an average of about 21 posts per member. That really isn't very good, but if you were to take out the ten accounts with zero posts, it's a bit better. If you were to only count the accounts that have over ten posts, it would be really good because the forum really seems to be a small community of active members. These active members could contribute more though. Your forum is nearing the five month mark, and have yet to reach the 1,000 post milestone? That's not something to be proud of. I especially feel the three staff members could contribute more. You can't really expect active members but you can expect and/or require active staff members. There's a positive to everything though; your forum doesn't seem to be doing that bad nowadays. These past couple days have actually been pretty decent activity days. According to "Today's top 20 posters," your forum has had 51 posts today. That's a good percentage of the total amount of posts right off the bat. 34 of the posts are by you though. That doesn't necessarily show that activity is better, but it shows that you are committed. Potential members are suckers for people who never give up, will keep trying, and commit themselves. At the end of the day, no one likes a quitter. Overall, your forum's statistics aren't great, but if you can keep committed and keep posting actively then things should get rolling. You can't do it all by yourself though, you need some help from the rest of the staff team, and perhaps friends, family, colleagues, etc in real life? It's not a one man show. Good luck!
(Scored 16/20)
Staff Moderation
It appears to me that your forum has three staff members. I can't be too sure though, as there are a lot of colored usernames, and the "Universal NPC" group confuses me. I do know that the two administrators are staff members though, and I also know that the one person in the "Game Masters" group is considered a staff member. So, I guess that means your forum has three staff members. Three staff members is a pretty good amount. I don't feel you would absolutely need three staff members, but hopefully you can bank on some commitment from the couple members of the staff team. With your forum's current state and a small staff team, you need staff members that can really dedicate. You want staff members that can potentially contribute as much as you and possibly more. If you feel you are receiving this from fellow staff members, then by all means, don't make any changes, but if some things are lacking, don't be afraid to politely discuss issues. Even with that being said, does the forum truly need two administrators? Couldn't one of the administrators just be a moderator? I don't feel multiple administrators is necessary until your forum has grown a bit. The actual staff moderation seems to be fine though. Good luck making improvements.
(Scored 16/20)
Spelling/Grammar & Professionalism
Even with many issues concerning your forum whether it's the layout, theme, etc, I must say that you have done a pretty good job with content. It's not perfect, but perfect is very unlikely. You should still strive to having perfect content though. Overall, spelling and grammar is pretty nice, but it's definitely not flawless. I think you should focus a little more on the other issues concerning your forum before you focus on the content, as you seem to be doing alright. Seeing as your board descriptions are well-written and very descriptive, I feel I should go ahead and let you know of a few mistakes I noticed in your board descriptions. Firstly, in the "Archives" board description, "Old" doesn't need a capital letter. Secondly, the "Emulax City" board description's first sentence is a run-on sentence. Thirdly, in the "Jericho City - The Town of Golden Suns" board description, "City" doesn't need to have a capital letter. Fourthly, in the "Xexles Citadel" board description, "Thunder" doesn't need to be capitalized, there is two punctuation marks at the end, and the first sentence may be a run-on sentence as well, but I'm not completely sure. Lastly, you seem to get "your" and you're mixed up a lot, especially in the off-topic category. Just remember to proofread and spell check your board descriptions (or any index page content for that matter) and those important topics as well (such as the common forum rules topic). If you do all these things, things should take care of themselves. You may still have a mistake every once in awhile, but when it comes to your forum's content, your forum will seem pretty professional. After all, even major businesses and media-related people make a mistake every once in awhile. Good luck making improvements.
(Scored 18/20)
Total Score - 72/100
Final Remarks
Anime Galaxy seems to be a small community that is struggling with attracting new members to the forum. It seems to me that the little activity the forum receives is by the same group of people. I hope this review helps you with this issue.
Strong Points
Your forum's logo, social network accounts, and social network integration (Facebook log in system).
Things to Improve
Your forum's layout, activity, and theme.
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