Pre-Launch Review
Site Name: Chatty Nutters
Site Type: Forum
Age: 25 days
Appearance
When I look at Chatty Nutters, I notice that your forum is using the default MyBB theme. Also, your forum is using the default MyBB logo. Because of this, I think you really need to work on customizing your forum. A lot of people think that the default MyBB theme is bland and unappealing. Everything about the theme is very basic. While basic themes are sometimes a good thing, I don't feel like the MyBB theme is what you are looking for in that regard. Even if you don't have the money to go out and purchase a premium or custom theme, there are still a lot of excellent free MyBB themes available for download on the web. I think you should pick out your favorite theme that you feel will work best for your forum, and then go from there. You can then work on getting a logo and favicon that matches the theme. You are currently using the default MyBB logo as well. I think that looks very unprofessional. I assume you are planning on getting a logo soon, but your forum has been open for nearly a month now, so that is something that you should get done right away. Also, I think the current favicon fits your forum's genre well, but once you get a logo, I think you should have a favicon that matches the logo in some way. It is always great when the logo and favicon correlate with each other.
Layout
To start things off with this category, you really need to add board descriptions to your forum. Board descriptions might be unnecessary at times, but they have pretty much become a standard for all forums now. It looks kind of tacky that you don't have them. Your forum has seventeen boards. Considering your forum only has eleven members right now, I think you should probably narrow down the amount of boards some. You could easily merge a few boards and set up a few sub-boards to make things a little neater on the index page. For example, the "Jokers Corner" board has not had a post in three weeks now. It does not look like it is a very active board, so it might be wise to make it a sub-board in another board. I think the same could be said for all of the boards under the "Girls Club" category. You could have a "Girls Club" board instead, and then have "Hair and Beauty," "Fashion," and "Shopping" as sub-boards in the board.
First Impressions and Interest
My first impression when I viewed the forum was the appearance, and like I said above, I think you need to work on customizing your forum. Even if your forum has excellent content, the first thing noticed is almost always the color scheme and the images on your forum, so you need to work on making all of these things nice and welcoming. Before I clicked the link, I noticed the sub-domain. I usually don't say anything against sub-domains, but the "gb5.co" is kind of random. You can get a domain pretty easily here. Forum Promotion will register you a domain for only 4,000 FP$. That's already an awesome deal, but I know for a fact that there have been better deals in the "Domain, Forum, & Website Sales" board in the past as well. You only have 165 FP$, but you would be surprised how easy it is to earn FP$ on this forum.
Content
Alright, your forum has a total of 224 posts in 77 threads. It has been open for nearly a month now, so you have had a chance to see how things have started out. As far as progressing to being a successful forum, you need to ask yourself, is this where you want your forum to be right now? If the answer is a negative, then I think you should work on doing more promoting and stuff as well. You need to get your forum's name out. Anyways, as far as content goes, I can tell that you have done a decent job spreading out posts, so that you don't have a lot of inactive boards. There is still a problem with the three empty boards though. You need to work on getting content in those boards. Also, I think the quality of the rules topics on your forum could be improved. For example, I think
this topic could look a lot more professional. I actually can't even find the main rules topic, so if you have not made that yet, I think you should work on typing that up as well.
Words from the Reviewer
I think Chatty Nutters has the potential to be a good forum because there already seems to be at least a couple active members, but the forum's current appearance may really be holding progress back right now. It has been nearly a month and things could be better, but then again, they could also be worse. Overall, I think if you mainly work on improving your forum's appearance, things will be a lot better for your forum in the long run. I think it would definitely be a step in the right direction, to say the least.
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