In-Depth Review
Site Name: Antiquus
Site Type: Promotion/Advertising
Age: >1 year ago
The theme overall is pretty good, the blue color scheme is typical but once added with the dark hues it made it seemingly different than others. A great choice to begin with. Starting at the top, the logo is rather small. People are most likely not going to notice it, and it ends up being just something that’s there. It’s also a bit redundant as several times the title appears when you know the name of the site already. Try not to overdo the graphics as too much of it can cause clutter. Is it all necessary? It needs to be balanced with some simplicity so guests who are not familiar with it are not bombarded with text that tells relatively the same information. On a second note, the sliding box at the top featuring the ads looks a little too large and takes up a LOT of space. It’s good that you want people to advertise there and make it easy to read but some of the images though are blurry. Just a query, but what exactly was the thought behind the name of the forum? I’ll give you credit that it is indeed creative and authentic, but looking at it standalone it could give someone an impression the place was about antiques! I’m not asking you to go so far as to change the name of the title and link and so forth, but it was just interesting as to where the idea came from. It’s something you don’t expect to be a name of a promotion forum, you know? Just some food for thought. The container holding the forums looks rather blunt and with no border, everything looks like its floating. Lastly, the footer is very empty and has things out to the side that make it awkward. You could incorporate some coding here so make every part of your forum usable! Everything else seems very nice, the text isn’t all too difficult to read and you have a good selection of colors to be consistent throughout the website.
You have a total of 72,316 posts from 545 members which is excellent. Your members are clearly interested and drawn in by the topic and content of your forum which shows a great indicator for success. It’s even more amazing that at one time around half (250 to be exact) of the members were online at one time! It’s doing superb at a glance. Again, though, what it is lacking is balance. The spread of posts are pretty uneven from off-topic to on-topic. There are about 17,000 posts in the off-topic board, so a suggestion would be to split this board into more detailed categories. Put more effort into making posts and topics in things that are on-topic to encourage more centered discussion that fits in with the topic of your forum. The method for doing this is up to you; not adding to the post count in off-topic forums, rules and regulations, etc. Also though there are a good amount of members online (in the past 45 minutes, that is), the amount of views per forum are all either 1’s or 0’s. These make the forum look inactive, so I would suggest removing it and shortening the timeframe for a more accurate depiction of your forum’s current activity.
The forum categories seem logical but there’s really no other way you’re promoting the website than just by publicity. It makes it seem a bit one-sided. You could always decide to feature some services that could directly influence other forums and promote them that way to improve versatility. Of course, with that you would need the appropriate staff positions so finding the right people may take a while. It’s up to you. Some of the descriptions of the forums seem too short or generic. They don’t make the forum stand out at all and act like many other promotion forums out there. Think: What could you do to make your forum unique not just by appearance, but by content as well? What does your forum have to offer that most others might not?
Content and discussion is pretty good, though topics aren’t unique. Spelling and grammar is there, but could be extrapolated more. Other than that, most of your content seems good in quality and quantity. There are several responses to a majority of the topics posted which is great in terms of quantity, but mainly what needs to be done is have better quality. There needs to be more topics that are distinctive and well thought out, not just something you’ve seen before or came from the top of your head.
Words from the Reviewer
The forum is strong on one end and weak on the other. You have a great sense of aesthetics and arrangement that make the forum easy to navigate but there needs to be more to bring to the table. Think about the competition with different forums like yours: how does yours stand out? A forum can look great and have many topics available but if there’s not something new and valuable then it all just seems robotic and dull. It’s definitely getting there, just keep these points in mind as you continue to flourish. I wish it good luck.
Star Rating
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