Site URL: https://discussion.sx
Date Opened: 07-02-2016
Review Type: Advanced + Feedback Topic
Extra Notes:
Date Opened: 07-02-2016
Review Type: Advanced + Feedback Topic
Extra Notes:
Discussion Zone
- Thread starter The Plug
- Start date
Joshua Farrell
FP's Housekeeper
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Joshua Farrell
FP's Housekeeper
Advanced Review of Discussion Zone
https://discussion.sx/
Review by Joshua Farrell
https://discussion.sx/
Review by Joshua Farrell
First things first as I loaded your forum, I thought, oh this has a nice dark theme, which has a good balance of lighter colors, so that neither overwhelms each other. As I went initially to find your forums and statistics, I found that all of your forums that you currently have are hidden in tabs, could you explain the logic behind it? I also found that your forum lacks posts and topics, for the number of members you have. Could you explain the reasoning behind why you restarted everything, but kept the members?
Last but not least, you need to change the stuff that mentions the previous name of the forum, to the new name you are using. So to prevent any confusion on what the forum name really is.
Because of the confusion behind the above, I have rated the first impressions accordingly.
Honestly, for the number of members you have, you should have kept your original statistics. If you really wanted to restart, you could have moved all of your topics and posts to a hidden staff only board, so that you could do a restart without having to literally restart everything but the member count.
And honestly, with reopening back in February with your current memberbase, one would have assumed a better restart. I would have expected your post count to be closer to 5,000, than around 3,400 posts. Based on post count and member count numbers, your forum averaged 680 posts a month. While that is not entirely bad, it isn't good either.
I suggest that if you really want your forum to kick off better after your restart, you need to offer better incentives to your members, so that they will be more willing to stick around and post more often. One thing I can think of is to maybe lighten one or two rules a little, that otherwise would prevent a legitimate reply to some threads. For example, you could extend the allowed post time reply in new members threads, to be 2 weeks, instead of just 1.
Honestly, the best thing you need to do to get your activity level itself up, is to go about making more topics in the various boards that have less in it, than some of the larger more general discussion boards. If you can't think of good topic ideas, I am willing to bet that you can get some members here in the exchange boards to agree to making topics for you, if you are willing to go out of your way to ask. Also, I think that if you agree to do a limited activity/activity exchange for example a week, you might be able to encourage your members to reply to some of the new content being made, because the member is actually sticking around after their initial topic making.
While I don't exactly agree to a daily posting goal, I think that if you are going to keep that, you probably need to set more realistic goals, instead of making it look like you are hungry for a ton of posts being made on a daily basis. Between 10 and 25 posts a day would be more reasonable as a daily goal, than 50 per day. 50 per day makes me think that someone would go around and spam the forum to get the 50 all at one time, instead of making a smaller amount, and feeling that it is more attainable to get.
Honestly, I personally dislike tabbed categories, as it makes new visitors think that there is either something wrong with the forum, or that one needs to register to supposedly see the content that is otherwise hidden in the tabs. If you are doing this solely on making it so that your forum isn't utterly long with boards on the index, then I would understand somewhat. But also, an idea that could reduce the length for the regular member and visitor, would be to hide the upgraded category, and to only show it to those who have upgraded. Also, you could potentially have a board or two for requests to the groups and upgraded area, so that you could also reduce the potential for a long page for regular members and guests.
Pet issue here though, is the board "Projects and Investments" that seems to be showing up in every single tab, when it should only be showing in the Money Tab.
I like how everything else is setup though.
Design wise, I love the colors and graphics on the forum. Neither too bright, nor too dark in my opinion. The only real thing you need to work on, is fixing the links in the footer, so that they go to where they are supposed to. A few of them lead to non-existent places or places that don't have the same url as they need to have. Namely under the site section of the footer.
As originality goes, it is not a half bad way of doing a general based forum, as the group based forum option is a nice way to encourage members to donate towards the forum, and receive the ability to add an additional board to forum for those who want to talk about whatever subject they get approved to discuss. Though I honestly do not know how a marketplace category, is part of a general discussion forum. Nothing against it, it is just a bit confusing to see there.
The only issue that I see here that I can find, is potentially the rules to welcoming new members. I know you don't want people to reply to threads if they are older than so many days, but then again, you don't need to threaten with reduction of user abilities with so few repeat infractions.
Thing you liked best about forum: Theme and Layout Design
Thing you liked least about forum: Tabs
Overall Mark: (71 out of 100)
Good luck with your reboot. I hope you are able to restart it, and get it to have more activity this time around, than last time.
Good luck with your reboot. I hope you are able to restart it, and get it to have more activity this time around, than last time.
Joshua Farrell
FP's Housekeeper
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