In-Depth Review
Site Name: Express Yourself
Site Type: Graphic Design
Age: 2 years
First off, I love the name of your forum. It is a great name for a multitude of genera and niches, so good job on that. Starting from the top and going down.
The favicon is impossible to make out. It looks like a dark grey bubble with a black dot in it. Try to make it more readable. One suggestion is to make it colorful like your banner. Your banner is wonderful! The colors pop and really make a statement of what the forum is about. However, the text that is used is very hard to read, especially once you get down to the slogan, which I can't read at all. The overall theme is ok. For a design forum, I expected to see a completely custom theme in use. That is not the case here. It is a default, free theme that anyone can download from phpBB.com. There are some things that you can do to make the theme your own though. One of the most prominent items is the forum icons. They are currently the default phpBB ones. You could get really creative with them and make them over the top, or keep them simple. You could also change the color of the gradients to a different color, or to a rainbow of colors to flow with the banner. The rank images that you are using look to be original and unique to your forum. I also noticed that the contact icons seem to be custom as well. I would like to see more personalization of the theme.
The top bar is in prime position to get people to click on the register link. The navigation is clear, concise and in a good location. However, your banner is not clickable. That is something different and I am not sure if it was on purpose or if that is how the theme came. I would suggest adding the clickability back into the banner, even if it is just the words. The board names that are used are not unique, but that is ok. the descriptions are nice and short and get what the board is about across very well. Something that almost anyone who reviews your forum will agree on is that the chat box will take away from the usage of the actual forum. On top of it distracting from the forum, it does not blend with your theme at all. It seems like it was installed in a hurry and no steps were taken to make it match the theme at all. You have 17 boards right now. For a relaunch, with the active member base that you currently have, you probably have too many boards. While I understand that just merging some boards is not an option, you could maybe make some of them sub boards until such a time where your member base is large enough to move them back out to the index.
Of the posts that I read, most of them were short with little to no grammar, capitalization and punctuation. This alone would personally turn me away from registering. The art is really great though. You have managed to attract a lot of really talented artists. One thing I did notice was that all external links open in the same tab. I would highly recommend installing the Prime Links mod to make all external links open in a new tab. This will keep people on your forum even if the click on a link to view someones work. How long have you been in the restart phase? You have a good content base and that can help boost new members activity. Although, seeing as you have been open for 2 years, almost 9000 posts is nothing to brag about. Work on content generation yourself to help boost community involvement.
You have a Google PageRank of 0 and an Alexa rank of 787,059. You have only 23 sites linking in. This is not where your forum should be at this stage. you should have at least an Alexa rank of < 500,000. To boost these rankings, try submitting your forum to different design and art directories and top sites.
Words from the Reviewer
Express Yourself has a great chance to succeed. With over 8,000 posts it is clear that the forum was once active. With some time and dedication it can come back and regain te activity that it had 2 years ago. We wish you the best of luck with your forum and hope that this review will help you better your forum!
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