Large Forum Review
First Impressions
When I first visit your forum I feel slightly over-whelmed by the strong orange colour of your forum. One of the main reasons being that your whole slight loads pretty slow meaning I am left staring at blank colours for several seconds, this not giving me a very good first impression of your site. When everything has loaded my eyes immediatly hit the huge advert at the top of your forum. This takes up all my attention and it means I hardly look at anything else on the board, this really doesn't tell me that the forum is there for me, its there to earn money. After drawing my eyes away from the advert I am for some reason brougt into the middle of the screen looking at yet another empty space. I am using a widescreen computer (1300x700) meaning all your content is on the sides and there is nothing at all in the middle which is really off-putting for me as a viewer. When I start searching around the top of the forum for something that will tell me more about the forum I can't actually find anything. Your small text logo doesn't really tell me much about your forum or make me feel that your forum is special and unique in any way. There is nothing that makes me want to stay on your forum. You need to work on making your forum feel unique and special, make your members want to stay and help your forum grow. Create a fun community where people are going to stick around. Another thing that affected my impressions straight away, before I had even had a chance to view the site, was the slow loading speed. It took several seconds for the forum to load itself completley which left me looking at that strong orange on a blue background, which honestly doesn't look that good.This is a 15 day year old forum and right now I have decided for myself that your goal with this forum is to earn money. There is nothing that tells me the opposite, I see nothing that tells me you are running this forum for your community.
(Score: 7/15)
Appearance
I have already mentioned the top ad on your forum, but I actually feel that all the ads on your forum should be taken away. On such a young forum you shouldn't have ads, I have stated my reason above. The whole forum theme feels very empty with a lot of large white spaces which lack content. The first thing that strikes me as odd is the way the logo is used on this site. The logo is just of pure white text and the quality is poor, with the logo being very pixelated. As I have already said, the logo doesn't tell me what your site is about, which is a real shame. The logo is your chance to wow your visitors as soon as they log onto your site. Use colour, personality and images. For chat forums there are loads of querky things you can do, use speeck bubbles, people, expressions. As you have chosen an orange forum then use that orange colour in the logo, try and make your logo part of your forum. Right now it looks like you have two forum themes on-top of eachother. One blue and white, with an orange bulletin board on top. For this reason I feel you should have a different coloured background as the blue clashes far too much with the orange. Maybe a cappuchino, beige or peach coloured backgroud would work better, with a slight pattern on top.
Overall your theme does have a very clean appearance though, something which I really like. The design of it makes it very easy to navigate and you have used IPB in a very skilled way. The board markers you use are very simple but they do the job they are meant to do, I do feel a 1px border on them wouldn't hurt though. What does strike me as odd is the usage of the top area. When someone opens the page it is the top area they see before scrolling down, you could do so much more with this area than you currently are. Right now it is very empty, a small information box about the forum, an announcement bar or anything really would make the area much more appealing.
If we move on to the board topic lists there is something here that puts me off straight away. You have ads between the topics which just looks really tacky and confirms my opinions yet again. You should get rid of them straight away. The individual post layouts are very good though, the only thing I would like to point out is for appearance reasons it would be better if the back top button was aligned with the profile. Another thing which I am very happy to see is that the New Content button is available on all pages.
(Score: 15/20)
Statistics and Activity
I really have nothing to fault in this area. 1921 posts made by 83 members on a forum that has been open for 15 days. This gives you an average of 128 posts per day and 23 posts per member. Which for 15 days I cannot fault in the slightest. Even when removing the staff total of 741 posts from the total you still have 15 posts per member and 78 posts per day from your members. These statistics are great and I just hope this is something you can keep up as your forum grows. If you continue this way you will have a very healthy and active forum!
(Score: 20/20)
Ratios
You currently have 3 staff members, I don't really feel that you need 2 administrators at this time, 1 moderator and 1 administrator is more than enough. Really you don't need the moderator either. However, all the staff seem to be pulling thier weight. When viewing your forum it is easy to see what interests your members have. You have a large amount of posts in the Technology section, which is fine as a general discussion board should have lots of posts in all boards. There are three boards that grab my attention though, these are the media station, the chopping board and life dimension. The reason these stick out at me are due to the very odd topic/post ration. For example in the Media station you have 10 topics and 100 posts. I would like to see a lot more topics that are creating new discussion instead of the same old topics being answered again and again. This is something you and your staff need to work on, creating new topics daily to help your members spread discussion which should help to boost your activity even more. Other than that I feel your boards have a good set-up, they are well organised and cover most things a small general discussion board should.
(Score: 7/10)
Content
I was for some reason unable to see your announcements, maybe a setting that needs fixing. What I did notice from the board index was that you had an announcement asking your members to vote for you. When an administrator starts asking their members to vote for them then warning bells ring for me, I really don't like this. It just tells me even more that I am correct in asuming you only want to earn money off of this site. Don't do it in future, it really doesn't look good. What I can say that is a good thing is that your staff and your members use very good spelling and grammar on your forum. This gives me a very positive image of your forum and you should be very happy with the members you have, work hard not to lose them! There are no short posts, or spam posts, which either tells me your forum is well moderated or you have a mature community. Whichever it may be it shows me a very professional and happy community which is great and well reflected in your statistics. It isn't often you can have great activity and high quality posts, but you have found a winning formula here. There are two things I suggest you look into though, there are some small grammatical errors in your rules, such as this one: "Please
can you respect other members.". Also, your board descriptions are very un-even. Some are long, detailed and well-written whereas others are short and not very informative. Judging by the way you write on your forum then new board descriptions should be a piece of cake for you.
(Score: 16/20)
Navigation
Your forum is very easy to navigate and I have no trouble finding anything I may be looking for. I do feel there could be another login link, maybe at the bottom of the forum but apart from that I can't find many faults. The board works very well, it is nice to not see any off-topic, general discussion or forum games board. This shows me that you have a great, mature community. I was unable to locate any type of Terms of Service or Privacy policy on the board, which for me is really worrying. When joining a forum all members must agree to the privacy policy and ToS, but it is very few members that make a copy of it. For this reason it is important you provide a copy that members can refer to, in this case you haven't. This basically means that members could do things and claim they didn't do anything wrong as you haven't supplied them with anything that says otherwise. I suggest you add links to these in the footer as soon as possible. I do find the help section you have very well-written but a bit basic, there are many more things that you could add to this, just google "Common forum user issues" and you will be given many suggestions.
(Score: 11/15)
Total Score
76/100
Final Remarks
A great start to a forum that I at first glance got the wrong impression of. You have a great member base with some quality discussions, but it is going to take time and dedication to keep this going. You have done a great job so far, so don't give up! There are small things here and there on your forum that makes me wonder if you hurried the opening a bit too much, but they can be fixed without too many issues.
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