First Impressions: (10 out of 15)
You know, before I dug around the thread to read what others said, when I first popped in to your forum, I was surprised and confused all at the same time. Instead of reading the message at the top of the forum describing the forum for the guest, I immediately hit the "x", and started looking around the forum, trying to find the forum software. Much to my ignorance, I finally headed back here, and found out your forum runs on Discourse.
What also threw me off, was that I wasn't used to the way the index is presented. Funny thing enough, I thought your forum was a social network, not a forum.
😀 Good thing I got to my senses.
First things first, I love the never ending index reload, as you scroll down it. In a sense, that helps with thinking that there is more to it, than just what is initially loaded.
Though I find your theme odd for a forum based on Anime. I just thought you would have more images based around various Anime's like new and old images for the forums that were anime characters.
I suggest for a first impressions visit, that you add a little bit more flare to the design, so that it feels a little bit more like you would expect for an anime forum. One of the things you could do, is have brighter colors or an background image that combines a bunch of anime characters for the background. So that way, you could keep the colors you have now, but have something to help better identify the forum, than just the name of it, and the small banner you have.
Site Structure: (12 out of 15)
For the structure, I definitely say that Discourse came up with a pretty good idea, with combining the feed of twitter or facebook, and the standard forum. I definitely like how the threads show up in one central location, or on the forum index if you don't want to go to the homepage.
A suggestion I could probably make in terms of your boards, is that you could have a more variety of Anime related boards to choose from. Why? Because there are a number of popular Anime's that you could tap a crown from the fan userbase, if you play your cards right!
Also on your categories list tab, I feel like you need to expand on the descriptions of the boards, due to the fact that even I am still having a little bit of trouble figuring out what could be discussed in a couple of the boards, based off of the short descriptions. You don't need to make them super long, but long enough to make sure that people have no doubt in their minds on what is allowed to be discussed in whatever board they are in.
Design Quality: (8 out of 15)
As I mentioned in the first impressions, you need to help give your forum a little bit more color, and something to help better identify your forum as a Anime Forum. Get a background image and possibly update the colors if need be to match the background image. also, I would consider seeing about getting anime characters as your on and off images for your boards.
Originality: (10 out of 15)
With originality, you did pretty good on picking a forum software not commonly used, so kudos to you for that.
🙂 What you really need to do to help broaden the originality, and actually make a claim out there to be the place to go for Anime, is actually broadening the board selection away from just the general board areas for anime, and actually adding popular Anime's, or their respective companies behind them. That way, you can ensure that you will have a dedicated crowd of users that will want to be on the forum, for the discussion of their favorite Anime's.
Overall Mark: (40 out of 60)
If you take into consideration what I have suggested, I am betting that you will go far! good luck with the forum!
