Basic Review
Site Name: Hobby Pros
Site Type: Specific Discussion (Vehicle-related)
Age: ~3 months
Appearance
First impression is rather confusing, unfortunately. Looking at the name of your forum and the header (or around 1/3 of the index page when I first clicked your forum link), I couldn't tell at all what the forum is about. "Hobby Pros" didn't really explain much, so is the banner and favicon of the forum. No signs to show what this forum is before I scrolled down. This can be a point that turns off visitors as it feels confusing. Your header has quite a large area for forum banner; you can use it to add a tag line to explain what your forum is about, or add pictures, and so on. Use the empty space. I think "Forum" should be first link before "What's New?" in navigation menu, as it is more important. Also, no link back to the main page/website? Aside from that, I like the design of your header, it is quite unique.
Scrolling down to the index body, it feels not as hyped as the header is. Perhaps you can use the color combination in header for the body as well to make it not so boring with so much white. Nice categories/forums icons, though I'm not sure if fire is really related to what your forum is about. Thread icons are standard, and post layout doesn't seem so tidy with the strange alignment of reputation icon. I think if you customize them with unique icons and proper layout, it will be great. The side bar is rather empty with only new posts widget, you can add something else such as new threads, or feed from social networks, so all space is used properly.
There isn't much problem with the footer; the statistic box is too wide compared to the index body, and you have double "back to top" link so close to each other in the footer. Either one works.
Layout
The layout confuses me too. In "News and Information", besides forum-related news, you also put in news for new products or promotions. I think that would be better off at the second category as they are all about news and specific to your forum's niche, not the forum itself. Then you have a stand-alone forum for racers, local sections, and for-sale sections. I think to start with your forum needs to start small and focused. Racers area seems to go pretty good so you may want to move the section as sub-forum of third category. While for local and for-sale sections, for now given how empty they are I suggest you to merge them into one forum and put them as sub-forum at another category. I think the third category would suit them best. In that category you have many forums, but many are still small so maybe they can be merged or made as sub-forums of another sections. For example modification-related area (radio and body paint) can be merged into one section. I have no further knowledge of the forum so I can't tell exactly what can go where, I believe you know it better. Just keep in mind that empty sections are not good for new forums, and you have too many of them at the moment.
Statistics and Activity
Hobby Pros has 1,062 posts with 51 members. Roughly it means around 20 posts per member and almost 90 posts per week. For a forum as old as around three months, the number is not bad. Staff members wise, I think you have right amount there, one administrator and one super moderator. For a forum as small as 50 members, a super moderator might not yet needed, but if it can help to take care of things around and boost activities I guess it can work. The two staff members have highest post count so far; understandable for a new forum but it should be long-term goal to make members more active in posting (there is quite a difference between few most active members and the rest of the community). You will also need to work on the number of threads; the number is very small compared to total posts.
Content
To start with in this area, I don't know much about the niche of your forum (or maybe don't know anything at all) so this opinion might be slightly biased.
As I mentioned before, first time visiting your forum I was very confused with what the forum is actually about. Even until I scrolled down to see more forums, I see abbreviations and terms I don't know. I think you need to make the sections as clear as possible, even for visitors who are not familiar with the niche. The forum names and descriptions need to be universal. Avoid abbreviations if possible. (Until now I don't even know what RC stands for.) Try not to repeat the same words for descriptions and be as clear as possible. Exactly same descriptions for the local sections don't look very good.
Grammar wise, there doesn't seem to be many grave mistakes. Just a missing letter from a forum description: "News
fro Model Airplane News". Inside posts there are more mistakes; I noticed a few from staff members. While it is acceptable to make mistakes, do try to improve more to give more professionalism to the forum.
What I'm curious about is how your forum has no rules thread. It has become such a standard for forums to have something to base the whole community on; what can be done and what members must know outside general sense of online ethics. I think you should have that added and highlight most important things your community might need, at least.
The discussions are mostly located at the "Electric Scale Buggies", news, introductions, and off-topic sections. Try to add more threads and interesting content to other sections as well to keep them alive with activity. If not for the time being you can merge 'dead' sections and expand later on once interest seem to grow to a better rate.
Organization and SEO
Searching "Hobby Pros" at Google and Yahoo gave your link in first place and redirected me to your website/front page. It is still a good result for the whole website, I suppose, although from forum review point of view it may mean the forum is not very popular. A more specific search using keywords like "rc cars", "rc trucks", and so on didn't give satisfying result. A check on page rank didn't show results either since your website is the one stands out more than the forum. No data from Google Page Rank. Alexa Traffic Rank is 7,743,219
with 7 back links. If you want to give more exposure to your forum, give more content there, put more links at the front page, and leave more backlinks at various related websites for more interest.
Words from the Reviewer
The forum seems rather young and too empty compared to the front page. Therefore it needs more content and interesting features to be able to lure members in. There seems to be many websites offering the same information in this niche (though I'm not much aware of it) so with hard work and unique additions I think you will be able to survive and grow bigger.
Star Rating
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