Colony-Wars
Full Review by Bazinga!
Scoring:
First Impressions & Appearance – (10 out of 20)
I like the idea of your website/forum. Having a site that is revolved around creating your own world and characters in a science fiction type setting is awesome (at least, I think so). However, when I look at the opening page, there are a couple of things that don't click with me. The banner/header and the background. The banner/header of the site doesn't seem to fit well with the theme of your site (at least not in my mind). Also, I don't think the background makes your site stand out enough. I know it's probably made to look like the sky at night time but it feels a little bit bland to me. The other things on your site are good because they give me information about your website/forum that I can understand. I would like to see the banner/header and the background to match what they are describing.
As far as the forum aspect, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of a banner/header. I would center it and make it more readable. Right now, the title isn't much bigger than the writing of the forum. I wouldn't make it too big though. You don't want it to be too big because it would just overpower your navigation bar that is directly underneath it. Also, the grey color everywhere on the forum doesn't look really pleasing to the eyes (at least it isn't to me). You could add some features or graphics to the forum side but not so much that it distracts members from the main reason they are there. For instance, here you could add a night sky but make the stars look like they are sparkling against the night sky. That would be a cool feature provided it isn't too flashy.
Site Layout – (15 out of 20)
As far as the website part, it is pretty organized. I like they way in which the information about your site is laid out and it's pretty simple to understand. The same goes with the forum aspect of your site. The only thing I don't understand is the "Administration Section". I am having trouble understanding why that is visible to everyone. I think it should be visible to the staff only. If you want keep the "Wall of Shame" part visible to everyone as an example to other members so that they can see how not to behave, then I personally would just make an announcement about it in the "Announcements" section of the forum.
Statistics and Activity – (11 out of 20)
You show that you have plenty of members. The trouble I see, is even though you have 290 total members, you still have some parts of the forum that are empty. You shouldn't still have parts of the forum that are empty when you've been open since March of 2007 and you currently have 290 total members. By now, you or another staff member could have started a few posts in those areas by now. In my eyes, it doesn't look good when a forum has empty sections. Especially when they've been open as long as you have. If you have to, have a competition and offer prizes to get members to post. If the members you have aren't posting, then it will appear that your current members aren't happy. That doesn't look good to a guest that is viewing your forum. It's a bit of a let down when you go from the main page of the website portion to the forum and see that there are empty spaces.
Content – (11 out of 20)
I think you have good content. I really like the idea of your website/forum. As mentioned previously, you need to make sure that all the sections of the forum have some posts in them. If you have to, you or another staff member can start some posts in those areas to get them going. Same thing can be done with areas that haven't had any posts in a while. You just need to make sure that you have equal amount of content in all areas of the forum.
Also, when trying to click on certain things on your main page (like the "Colony Wars Storyline" for instance), I got an error message saying that information wasn't available. Things like that could be a turn off to a guest that is viewing your site for the first time. They may loose what interest they had in your site if there isn't enough information for them to learn about the niche of your site.
Spelling/Grammar & Professionalism – (16 out of 20)
I have not noticed any spelling or grammar mistakes on the website portion of the site. Everything is neatly outlined and easy to understand in my eyes. As far as the forum part, there are a few spelling or grammar errors made my members but they are still readable. However, to someone that isn't a native speaker of English such as myself, they may be a little hard to read. On the main page of the website portion of the site you have stated that Colony Wars is a "Massive Multiplayer Online - Colony Wars is an MMORPG. This means it involves hundreds, even thousands of players from all over the world." Well, not everyone in the world is going to be a native speaker of English. There may be some people that have learned English as a second language but it may not be as familiar to them as their home language. The point is that everything needs to be easy to read to everyone. If you are going to be a world wide website/forum for everybody, then you'll need to be able to cater to everybody.
Total Score - (63 out of 100)
Final Remarks:
So, to cap it all off, you could work on making sure the forum part of the site looks like it is active. To boost activity, you or any of the other staff members could post a few threads to get some discussions going. Also, making sure all the graphics fit together to convey what your site is about. Other than that, I would say that you have a nice site.
Strengths:
- - Love the idea of your forum.
- Good organization and helpful information about the site.
Weaknesses:
- - Keeping up with the forum so that there isn't empty areas.
- Changing a few graphics here and there to make sure everything fits together.
