I would like a review for my forum http://f1talk.info/
F1 Talk
- Thread starter f199
- Start date
Don't worry f199, your review is finally here. Subz has asked me to lend a hand for a while whilst the review team are short staffed.
So..brace yourself. ~twisted~
Number Of Members:
• Total members 37
Considering your forum has been around for quite some time I am quite disappointed at your member count. The number of members on a forum is looked upon by existing members and guests alike. A high member count suggests that your forum has things that are worth signing up for. On the other hand, a low member count suggests that your forum is not interesting enough for members to sign up for.
There are plenty of ways you can score new members, the trick is finding out how and where to find them. It goes without saying that getting members to even sign up for your forum is one of the hardest parts of being a forum administrator. I know from the past few forums i have started that it's not an enjoyable task, but it's definitely worth the effort. I would suggest adding some extra features to your site that entice guests to sign up. This could be anything from a reputation system to an Arcade. It's a pshycologically proven fact that people like to consider themselves better than or higher than someone else in a particular thing. Adding elements like an Arcade or a reputation mod, perhaps even a points system is an ideal way to do this. Another fantastic method of gaining members is to find a promotion forum with a packages team that allow you to request extra registrations. Even if it takes you an hour to earn the right points or posts on their forum, you'll definitely enjoy the reward of having extra members. In summary, addicting (member-only) elements and support from various packages teams will increase your member registrations and improve the overall statistics of your forum.
Number Of Active Members:
In my opinion, an active member is somebody who visits every day and posts on the forums. According to your statistics (excluding bots) you have about three active members on your forum. Considering you have 37 members i would have thought your active user-base would have been higher, perhaps five or six. As i mentioned in the previous paragraph, active members are hard to come by, so you really need to think of ways to make your members active - this means giving your members something they can do every day they visit and not get bored of it. Remember that your post count plays a huge part in getting members and keeping them active. We will disucss this in the next paragraph.
Number Of Posts (Spam or Otherwise):
Total posts: 748. Considering your forum has been going for quite some time and you have over 50 members most would consder this post count as appalling. I have witnessed lots of forums earn this post count in a matter of days, but if you have this post count after a few months to me it suggests a lack of promotion has been put into exposing the site to the internet. It's not hard getting members to post on your forum, yes some find it easier than others but generally it should not be hard. Firstly, packages from various promotion forums can be sought after. There are hundreds of promotion forums on the internet and i can almost guarantee that each has a packages service. I am sure you are aware of the list of promotion forums users have let us know about. They are a great way of adding backlinks to your site, raising awareness and scoring valuable packages which incease posts and members. Another thing you could offer members to inspire members to post more is rewards for posting. At PixelRaider (link in my sig) we offer great rewards to members in return for points they earn by posting. Things like Domain names, a custom rank, real money etc etc... go down really well. I would definitely suggest implementing a service like that to attract people to join up to your site and give them something to post for.
Appearance (First Impressions):
The look of yor forum is basic, overused and boring. Starting from the top...When users visit your site the first thing they should see is a big banner exploding with content. It could be a collage, a ful size photograph, a cross section of a forumula 1 car or anything else...but i don't (and i'm sure lots of other people don't) consider a large grey banner with two crispy forumula 1 cards and a crispy forumula 1 logo adequate. If you remember the TopGear forum i used to run we used cut-outs from TopGear wallpapers for our banner and added our forum text into any blank area we could find. I would strongly suggest you do the same for your banner, some good images i would use are:
http://flickr.com/photos/ariffbudiman/2363379975/
http://flickr.com/photos/subapeter/2607396848/
With the correct layer masking techniques you can turn these small images into a great banner. As for the rest of your forum i think it needs a re-style altogether. The style you're using is nice, but it's over used on other forums and not suitable for your genre of forum. I would expect a dark forum for a forumula 1 forum with a nice bright banner which sticks out and catches the guest's eye.
Finally, i think your sidebar needs to be made a bit smaller. At the moment it is very close to your forum list and does not look professional in the slightest. As your affiliates, i think they would be more suited in the footer of the site. On that note i would in fact remove your affiliates - you seem to be linking to other sites however those sites aren't in fact linking back. In conclusion, I would ditch the boring dull / grey skin and go for a dark one with a bright and vibrant banner that catches the guest's eye.
Layout:
The layout of your forum seems to be fine. It looks like you could do with some more sections for members to post in as at the moment they're restricted to only a few. This may be the reason members aren't posting much.
Moderation:
Moderation seems to be fine. You have a very low amount of active members and posts so there does not need to be a moderator at this early stage.
Activity:
Activity on your forum is concerning. It appears that most (if not all) of the other sections on your forum have more posts than the actually formula 1 discussion area - the reason they're supposed to be on your forum. I would suggest posting a wide varierty of topics in your formula 1 disucussion forums, which will increase post count and member partisipation too. As mentioned previously, only 3 active members over 24 hours is not impressive by any means. Refer to the advice i have already mentioned to increase this statistic.
Whilst i have been doing this review there have been 0 members on your forum except for BOTs. You should have high goals and try to get at least one member on your forum at any point in the day. I know this is a huge challenge, but if you aim for this you will slowly see the rest of your forum stats increase.
Spelling and Grammar
There are a few grammar errors in your forum, i will list them below.
"If you have Feedback about the site post here." should be
"If you have feedback about the site post here."
"Guest Posting Enabled." should be
"Guest posting enabled."
"please follow this link this forum." should be
"please follow this forum link."
"New to the forum? welcome yourself here." should be
"New to the forum? Welcome yourself here. "
"Want to talk about games, TV, music? come here." should be
"Want to talk about games, TV, music? Come here. "
Other than that everything seems fine.
Overall Mark (Out Of 100): 20
You're almost there. There are significant signs of lazy promotion and lots of things such as the banner, skin and new topic / reply buttons need a bit of tweaking. We have a graphics team here that can provide you with graphics if required. There is still lots of work to be done, and it's nothing that can be done in just a few hours. I would be interested if you came back in a month and had let the review team have another look at your forum. Please don't take this review personally, if you have read any of my other reviews you'll notice i mainly point out the bad things. I wish you the best of luck with your forum.
End of review.
So..brace yourself. ~twisted~
Number Of Members:
• Total members 37
Considering your forum has been around for quite some time I am quite disappointed at your member count. The number of members on a forum is looked upon by existing members and guests alike. A high member count suggests that your forum has things that are worth signing up for. On the other hand, a low member count suggests that your forum is not interesting enough for members to sign up for.
There are plenty of ways you can score new members, the trick is finding out how and where to find them. It goes without saying that getting members to even sign up for your forum is one of the hardest parts of being a forum administrator. I know from the past few forums i have started that it's not an enjoyable task, but it's definitely worth the effort. I would suggest adding some extra features to your site that entice guests to sign up. This could be anything from a reputation system to an Arcade. It's a pshycologically proven fact that people like to consider themselves better than or higher than someone else in a particular thing. Adding elements like an Arcade or a reputation mod, perhaps even a points system is an ideal way to do this. Another fantastic method of gaining members is to find a promotion forum with a packages team that allow you to request extra registrations. Even if it takes you an hour to earn the right points or posts on their forum, you'll definitely enjoy the reward of having extra members. In summary, addicting (member-only) elements and support from various packages teams will increase your member registrations and improve the overall statistics of your forum.
Number Of Active Members:
In my opinion, an active member is somebody who visits every day and posts on the forums. According to your statistics (excluding bots) you have about three active members on your forum. Considering you have 37 members i would have thought your active user-base would have been higher, perhaps five or six. As i mentioned in the previous paragraph, active members are hard to come by, so you really need to think of ways to make your members active - this means giving your members something they can do every day they visit and not get bored of it. Remember that your post count plays a huge part in getting members and keeping them active. We will disucss this in the next paragraph.
Number Of Posts (Spam or Otherwise):
Total posts: 748. Considering your forum has been going for quite some time and you have over 50 members most would consder this post count as appalling. I have witnessed lots of forums earn this post count in a matter of days, but if you have this post count after a few months to me it suggests a lack of promotion has been put into exposing the site to the internet. It's not hard getting members to post on your forum, yes some find it easier than others but generally it should not be hard. Firstly, packages from various promotion forums can be sought after. There are hundreds of promotion forums on the internet and i can almost guarantee that each has a packages service. I am sure you are aware of the list of promotion forums users have let us know about. They are a great way of adding backlinks to your site, raising awareness and scoring valuable packages which incease posts and members. Another thing you could offer members to inspire members to post more is rewards for posting. At PixelRaider (link in my sig) we offer great rewards to members in return for points they earn by posting. Things like Domain names, a custom rank, real money etc etc... go down really well. I would definitely suggest implementing a service like that to attract people to join up to your site and give them something to post for.
Appearance (First Impressions):
The look of yor forum is basic, overused and boring. Starting from the top...When users visit your site the first thing they should see is a big banner exploding with content. It could be a collage, a ful size photograph, a cross section of a forumula 1 car or anything else...but i don't (and i'm sure lots of other people don't) consider a large grey banner with two crispy forumula 1 cards and a crispy forumula 1 logo adequate. If you remember the TopGear forum i used to run we used cut-outs from TopGear wallpapers for our banner and added our forum text into any blank area we could find. I would strongly suggest you do the same for your banner, some good images i would use are:
http://flickr.com/photos/ariffbudiman/2363379975/
http://flickr.com/photos/subapeter/2607396848/
With the correct layer masking techniques you can turn these small images into a great banner. As for the rest of your forum i think it needs a re-style altogether. The style you're using is nice, but it's over used on other forums and not suitable for your genre of forum. I would expect a dark forum for a forumula 1 forum with a nice bright banner which sticks out and catches the guest's eye.
Finally, i think your sidebar needs to be made a bit smaller. At the moment it is very close to your forum list and does not look professional in the slightest. As your affiliates, i think they would be more suited in the footer of the site. On that note i would in fact remove your affiliates - you seem to be linking to other sites however those sites aren't in fact linking back. In conclusion, I would ditch the boring dull / grey skin and go for a dark one with a bright and vibrant banner that catches the guest's eye.
Layout:
The layout of your forum seems to be fine. It looks like you could do with some more sections for members to post in as at the moment they're restricted to only a few. This may be the reason members aren't posting much.
Moderation:
Moderation seems to be fine. You have a very low amount of active members and posts so there does not need to be a moderator at this early stage.
Activity:
Activity on your forum is concerning. It appears that most (if not all) of the other sections on your forum have more posts than the actually formula 1 discussion area - the reason they're supposed to be on your forum. I would suggest posting a wide varierty of topics in your formula 1 disucussion forums, which will increase post count and member partisipation too. As mentioned previously, only 3 active members over 24 hours is not impressive by any means. Refer to the advice i have already mentioned to increase this statistic.
Whilst i have been doing this review there have been 0 members on your forum except for BOTs. You should have high goals and try to get at least one member on your forum at any point in the day. I know this is a huge challenge, but if you aim for this you will slowly see the rest of your forum stats increase.
Spelling and Grammar
There are a few grammar errors in your forum, i will list them below.
"If you have Feedback about the site post here." should be
"If you have feedback about the site post here."
"Guest Posting Enabled." should be
"Guest posting enabled."
"please follow this link this forum." should be
"please follow this forum link."
"New to the forum? welcome yourself here." should be
"New to the forum? Welcome yourself here. "
"Want to talk about games, TV, music? come here." should be
"Want to talk about games, TV, music? Come here. "
Other than that everything seems fine.
Overall Mark (Out Of 100): 20
You're almost there. There are significant signs of lazy promotion and lots of things such as the banner, skin and new topic / reply buttons need a bit of tweaking. We have a graphics team here that can provide you with graphics if required. There is still lots of work to be done, and it's nothing that can be done in just a few hours. I would be interested if you came back in a month and had let the review team have another look at your forum. Please don't take this review personally, if you have read any of my other reviews you'll notice i mainly point out the bad things. I wish you the best of luck with your forum.
End of review.
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