Small Forum Review
First Impressions
My first impression it has to be sais is that the theme is awful, as is the layout, it reminds of the Proglass themes, and I would guess is inspired by it, or is a modification of it, either way for me it just doesn’t work, dark styles are hard on the eyes, personally I find it difficult to stay on a dark theme for more than two or three minutes, not good if you want to increase you membership base.
Appearance
It’s plain that there has not been a lot of thought gone into the layout, login/register is duplicated, I have to ask why. The blue glow around the female graphic just isn’t working for me, why is it there at all, it really serves no purpose, only as decoration so why put it in such a high profile place.
The font chosen is hard to read when small,plus it’s all capitals, something I hate.
The grammar and spelling in the text box needs attention :
It really needs re-writing in a more legible font.
The forum icons are confusing, you have a key for them, but also include text explanations in the icon, you shouldn’t need both.
The banner chosen is quite good and is relative to the forum, however it should really reach the edges of the style or have feathered edges, I would also consider it too large, it would have the same impact if it were smaller.
Ratios and Statistics
At first glance your posting stats look great, then when you look closer it becomes apparent that all is not that well, your busiest forums are Announcments, General Discussion, and the Chat forum, which says your members are not using the forum for it’s primary purpose.
Staff wise you have more than enough to control the forum with two admin and two moderators.
Content
This is the hardest part for me to judge, simply because you are a specialist forum, from what I can make out, some forums have no posts because a member has yet to reach that level, and the amount of posts in each forum depends a lot on how many members have reached the said level. This takes me back to the type and click RPG’s that were available on the Spectrum, but on a different scale.
When I eventually understood how it worked it’s obvious why posts are limited to some forums, so yes there is content, and depending on how members are progressing it’s where it should be.
Final Remarks
I have to admit this is the first time I have seen a forum used in this way, it’s unique, there has to be a lot of thought gone into the game itself and how to control it, now the same amount of time and effort needs to go into presenting it to the waiting public.
Once you have sorted all that out, you will need to promote like mad, I can see it becoming popular with people interested in anime, whether or not you can keep up when that happens remains to be seen, you never know you might end up with another WOW on your hands.
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