Large Forum Review
First Impressions
There seems to be a need for blue everywhere in forums at the moment, and that is fine by me when it is used properly, my first impression on looking at your site was WOW, that’s blue, you have too many shades going on, I counted four, the descriptive text for forums comes across to me as a silver colour, while the forum headings are white, I personally would prefer to see some more contrast with the blue, the black definitely doesn’t work though.
The title Ekunia doesn’t say a lot about what you are, or what the forum is about, it would be a good idea to have some descriptive text in the header, or even a “Who we are” section in the first category.
The actual category titles need to be tweaked a little, they actually say little, this could of course been done on purpose to make the inquisitive delve deeper into the forum proper.
(Score: 10 /15)
Appearance
As mentioned above the chosen colours seem to clash, I didn’t really find the theme appealing at all, blue has to be used properly, as it is a difficult colour to work with other colours because it clashes with so many.
The whole of the index page seems a little disjointed, the banner bears no relation colour wise to the rest of the theme, yes it is a contrast, however my impression was that a banner should be bright and attractive, if it were more steel looking rather than a dull grey it would be more appealing. The red in the banner could have been used in the Index to tie the colours into each other, it’s a bit of an opportunity missed.
The forum icons are probably the standard default ones, again some custom ones could be used to add a different colour and to provide a little more interest.
Your Favicon is good, it’s one of the larger ones I’ve seen, but again bears no relation to the board theme, colour wise, a simple detail.
The rank images are very good, a little on the large side but good none the less, it would help if they had some form of description to give a clue as to who is high in rank, the profile layout I presume is MyBB, I have to say I prefer to see all the information on one side of the page, I find the layout you have a little confusing. A lot of your images, (smilies etc) need cleaning up, or you need to find some for dark backgrounds, again a small detail, but one that is easily rectified.
(Score:14 /20)
Statistics and Activity
This board is fairly established, the Admin account goes back to 2009, yet you are showing a Google rank of 0, to me that says your SEO is somewhat lacking, 256 members registered in about three years is very slow, and shows a lot of dedication by yourself to this project, I can only assume it is a very small niche we are dealing with here. Nuke is the most active member by a country mile, but as the admin you would expect that, the difference though is alarming, your next active member has 13k fewer posts, which to be fair is very disproportionate.
(Score: 14/20)
Ratios
You only have six forums, which members can actively engage in on a daily basis, to generate more activity I would suggest splitting the sub forums out, and even introducing more for members to contribute to.
(Score: 5/10)
Content
This is obviously a development forum, and they are notoriously poor content wise, unless that is, others are on the same level as you.
Looking around the forum, it is obvious that the majority of posts are one liners, and many are only two or three words, which is expected given the niche. It is a really difficult area to focus on and improve.
Because of this fact and that the majority of the content relates to the niche the score is remarkably high
(Score: 16 /20)
Navigation
There is some obvious customising having taken place on the navigation side, gone are the familiar “Board Index” and the like, when you grasp that concept, it’s as easy to navigate as any other MyBB forum.
(Score: 12/15)
Total Score
71/100
Final Remarks
Generally the site looks as though it has been put together in a big hurry, and released too early, I would hope it hasn’t looked like this for three years, it needs some attention to detail, and some major tweaks to increase activity and to be more friendly on the eyes.
If, as you said you are going corporate with this, then I’m afraid it needs a serious amount of work, this present theme and style does not look at all professional, it needs to be lighter and brighter, with a lot more going on, maybe a splash page would help improve some of these aspects.
After reading your review, please click here to rate your review.
