Crypto Union Forums
Review by @Cierra
First Impressions
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When I first visit Crypto Union I am greeted by a dark theme and a broken logo image. You may need to fix a link or re upload it to your server. I also see a dark pleasing background and a binary code header image. There are nine tabs, which is a moderate amount. Not too many or too little. One thing I would fix as soon as possible is the "blog" tab. I click on it and get an URL error. The blog might interest some people, so fix this soon. Overall, the first impression I get is average.
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Good
Design Quality
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The design of Crypto Union is good. You have a (what seems to be) custom theme. Something I noticed is that you do not have a light heme. I would add one, because some users, like myself, do not like dark themes or cannot see very well and need something light. There are many good themes
here, on the MyBB website. Also, choosing "Kryptos-Beta" does nothing. I am not sure why it is named "Kryptos" either, as the forum name is "Cryptos". I found that odd.The header is boring, try to find something more interesting and with more "pop". The same with the black background, maybe somthhing with dots or stripes would be better as it makes the backgound stand out.
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Good
Site Statistics
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You have 155 members, 3,290 posts and 829 threads, that's wouldn't be too bad if the site was new, but it's not. A lot of those posts and threads date back a couple months or more also. While you do have 3,000 posts, looking around I don't see that amount. Maybe it's because they are in the staff forum(s), archived posts, etc.. but to me that would make it seem like you are trying to make the forum look like it has more activity and posts than it really does, or that you are hiding something. Whatever he issue is, I would get it sorted out quickly.
You only have 7.12 posts per day and 1.8 threads per day. Those statistics are very poor, so it's something that really needs to be worked on. Your staff team needs to be posting more and facilitating conversations. You lack in threads more than posts, so focus on new threads first. You get "0.34" members a day, so you also need to work on advertising/promotion, and getting Crypto Union out there. The top forum is "Chit Chat", which has nothing to do with your niche.
It may be discouraging for visitors or first time guests to see that most posts and threads have nothing to even do with technology and your niche. One suggestion would be to turn off post count in "Chit Chat", because then users might want to post somewhere else where their post count increased. Alternatively, you can disable the New Points plugin or decrease the amount earned for that particular forum. If you don't know how to do that PM me and I can help you.
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Very Poor
Staff Professionalism
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You have two "staff", though I am not sure what their roles are and what they do as "staff" is not descriptive, it could mean anything. The rest of the staff team consists of four admins, and two moderators. I am not sure why "OG!'S" name is red when the rest of the mod team is green, that looks very odd to me.
You should think about firing some staff, while it may be hard you have eight staff members total, that is too many for a small board like yours. Also, it looks discouraging to me that some staff members haven't logged in since December. This shows me that they are not active and not really committed to the forum any more.
All staff seem to be pretty friendly and welcoming, and mostly professional which is good.
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Poor
Originality
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Your forum niche is very original, which is hard now a days, so kudos to you. I have seen a lot of technology forums, but technology is only a little part of your forum. You may different sections and tabs, giving people ample places to post in. You might have too many, because some areas only have one post while others hundreds, not good.
The market and group(s) feature you currently have is
very over done, try to make it more your own and unique. If you post in the "Brainstorming" sub-forum here at Forum Promotion I'll bet you get many new ideas and suggestions.
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Great
Site Structure
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Crypto Union is structured pretty well, and everything looks neat and organized. It would be good if you condensed some sub sections as you have a lot, one example of this that I see is that you can combine "off-topic" and "chit chat" to make one larger forum, and reduce the amount of smaller or less popular forums. The "
File sharing" looks weird just placed in "Home", I wold move it to "infosec" or "system". The same with the
"Freebie" section. Besides the amount of small sub sections and placement of that one forum I would say you have everything organized well.
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Excellent
Grammar & Spelling
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Your grammar and spelling is poor overall, but I don't see any mistakes in forum titles or descriptions. Announcement posts are the things that need the most work. I recommend running everything you do through a spelling and grammar checker to make sure that everything is a hundred percent error free.
I do notice some errors in one of your announcements,
here. Corrections are in
bold.
What Happened?
Well CryptoUnion wasn't really down,just everyone has went inactive due to real life issues & studies. But we are all active again and we will be working at full force to get CF active & get stuff fixed up around here!
I would fix that now, as it doesn't look professional. Neither does the video accompanying the announcement, as it's not needed I would remove it.
This announcement also has some errors:
Enjoy. Still working on the back-end but I say it's good to go for some community discussions!
Have fun! Message me or any of the other administrators if you need help.
There are more of these mistakes in other announcements as well.
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Poor
Final Remarks
With a lot of changes, hard work, dedication, and more activity, Crypto Union Forums can get back to it's prime again. You have some big changes to make in order for the forum to survive and grow. Good luck.
Your Score
