Dreadnought Forums
Review by Cosmic
Design Quality
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Overall, your design is good, and clearly relates to your forum's genre. However, there are several things which I suggest that you change in the design.
1. Softer Gradients. On the index page, and some other pages, the table gradient is too harsh. That makes the forum look a bit old fashioned, and not as pleasant on the eyes as it would with a softer gradient.
2. Add more Padding to the Guest Box. This is one of the first things guests will see, so is pretty important. Here is an example which shows how the icon you have on the guest box is too close to the side.
Also, I recommend adding more spacing between the letters. Something like the CSS rule line-height:1.5em. Finally, the guest box's title is too brightly colored compared to the other colors on the forum. Maybe make it a fairly light shade of gray?
3. Three-Dimensionality. I recommend adding some shadow to the categories on the index, to make it look like they are floating in space, rather than resting on a space-patterned wallpaper, as they appear to be now.
Overall, your design is good, though.
🙂
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Good
Site Statistics
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It's good to see that each of your sections is pulling its own weight, overall. You need to have more content, although that's also true for most forums. Overall, you seem to be doing pretty well when it comes to statistics. Particularly for a forum as young as yours.
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Average
Site Structure
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I think it's a bit odd to have your homepage be a content page rather than the forum index. Since there is only one link to the index, and it's a small one, it makes your forums harder to get to, and some people may never get past the homepage, as it isn't too clear that your website is a forum. Also, from what I understand, your website is a fansite, correct? I recommend making this more clear.
In terms of your forum's structure, I think it needs work. I think you can merge the news zone and game zone together into one, much larger, category with a few new sections. I think you should also re-order your meta category (community zone) to follow forum conventions a bit more, just so forum users will better understand what they're looking at. By that, I mean have the announcements as the first section, then a feedback section, and then introductions.
Here's my suggestion for what your index should look like, as I think it's a bit simpler to simply propose an alternative than a bunch of specific suggestions:
[Deadnought Zone]
- Deadnought Game News
- Dreadnought Discussion
- Deadnought Videos <-- Rename "Media" to "Videos," as it's more specific.
[Community Zone]
- The Bridge
- Staging Area <--- Maybe come up with a new name for this?
- Officer's Mess
I also recommend adding a new section under your Dreadnought category. Maybe a forum for speculation on what the game will be like, or ideas? Not sure. You are more familiar with the genre than I am.
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Poor
Final Remarks
This is a good forum which has a lot of potential. I recommend improving the structure, and focusing on both adding content and improving the design a little bit. Structure is most important, though, in my opinion. Good luck!
Your Score
