Pre-Launch Review
Site Name: Blog Advertiser
Site Type: Advertising
Age: 3 days
Appearance
Upon first visit, I thought that this was a rather nice theme. After a closer look, I found some items that looked odd. I will address these from the top to bottom for the sake of fluidity.
The header area is well designed. The banner and menu are easy to read and find what you are looking for right away. The area where it says "Hello There, Guest!" is hard to see on first glance. I had to really search to find a link to the registration page. I would suggest enlarging the text a link three or four points to increase exposure to the registration page. The banner is very well designed and I enjoy the box of fireworks that you added. I noticed that there is a hover effect on the banner when you hover over it. However, when you move away, the banner snaps back to its default state. It would be nice to see the effect on both the hover and when you move away. There is an ad (my assumption as my AdBlocker blocked it on first visit) that is advertising your forum, which the visitor is already on. I am not sure what purpose it serves as clicking on it does not lead anywhere. I presume that you would either use the space for a banner rotation or premium ad placement. If both of these are an option, I would choose premium placement as it has very high exposure. The menu is very clean and crisp. I have no suggestions for the menu text at all. Some of the items on the menu that are shown to guests are irrelevant to visitors in most cases. Private Messages, View Today's Posts, View New Posts and Search are, from my experience, hardly or never used by visitors, first time or returning. Those items could be shown to members only and in their place you could place items for the login and registration pages, shown only to guests, for increased exposure to the registration page.
The forum list is not very impressive. I find that the on/off icons are unnecessarily big and distracting from the board information. The text is very clear, crisp and readable. I would suggest adding some sort of diving line between the board name and descriptions, the posts and thread counts and the last post information. This would help distinguish between the board information, post counts and last poster information. Moving into the thread listing, there are a couple things that I would point out. The "Mark this forum read" and "Subscribe to this forum" text is very out of place and does not look like it belongs at all. Adding buttons that say "Subscribe" and one that has check mark and says "Read" would make these option blend better with the "New Thread"button. The size of the topic on/off icons are an issue again. They are more distracting in this setting then on the index as they are taking away from the actual content of the forum. The text is not proportionate to the index page or the view topic page and gives the forum an unbalanced or unfinished feel. The view topic page could use some work. There is a lot of empty white space that could be utilized in a very unique way if there is no post count or contact details in the mini profile area of the topic pages. It is hard to tell where the post should begin and end. The lack of an end border, or even a fade to a darker color, such as very light grey or ghost white would correct this. There is also no flow between to post to tell a visitor where the first post ends and the second post begins. All the posts feel pushed together and constricted.
The footer is very empty. I do not know if this on purpose or not. There is a lot of empty space that could be used for social links, banner ads, staff affiliates, or some other sort of service or information. I really do not have much in the way of suggestions for the footer.
The overall design of the forum I feel to be boring and bland. There is really nothing new in the design aspect to make it stand out from other forums. It is hard to tell that this is a custom theme.
Layout
The layout of your boards is very good. There is just enough to cover all the aspects that you should cover being a promotion forum. I do have a suggestion for the Services board. If you do plan on keeping all of the services in one board, use topic tags to discern one request from another and force members to use one before posting a topic. This would help you and your staff tell what service they want without having to open the thread. I would also suggest adding at least one general discussion board. This will help increase participation and the feel of community between your members if they have place where they can just talk about anything.
First Impressions and Interest
My first impression was an overall good one. It was only once I started looking for the little things that I noticed some of the details. My overall interest is very low as I do not own a blog. However, if I was a blog owner, I would be more inclined to join your forum as it is the first one that I have found dedicated to blogs.
Content
Your content is top notch. From the posts that I have read, there has been very minimal spelling and grammar errors. All posts were of good quality and complete thoughts. Keep up the good work!
Words from the Reviewer
I focused on the design as you asked for thoughts on the theme. I also did not find any bugs, other then the 2 links in the view forum page, mentioned above. There are a few visual things that I would change. I find the theme overall to be very boring and dull. It really does not make me want to join and participate in the community. Your overall goal is very nice and unique, even though it is a promotion forum. I wish you the best of luck with your forum!
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