Medium Forum Review
First Impressions
When I first opened up your forum, honestly, my first impressions could have been better. Is that the default mybb theme I see? That's something that needs to be changed. There are plenty of free themes to choose from. The logo would look good on an orange theme, but the one you have is blue, the colours don't really go very well together. Your logo should match the colours of the theme.
The layout, is a bit long perhaps, but it's not so long it would stop me from joining, which is good. It should really be around 15 boards, you're a bit over, I'll get into that more later. You have just over 300 posts as of now, and you have been open 19 days. This activity is not so good, but I see 4 members online now, two of which are staff, and you have several posts today so you're activity isn't awful.
Appearance
As I have already mentioned, you need to find a new theme. I find the default mybb theme rather boring and unattractive. I'd say this is the single most important thing you need to change right now. Your logo looks pretty good, but like I said, it doesn't work with the theme you have. I would find an orange theme for that logo. You want the colours to work well together and currently they do not. I notice you still have the default board markers as well, this is something I would change when you get a new theme. You don't have a favicon either, it is a good idea to get one if you want your site to stand out in members bookmarks. After registering I see nothing changes. I see a welcome PM, personally I am not a fan of them, I usually don't bother reading them anyway but since I am reviewing your site I will.
Hello, FPreviewstaff! Welcome to Far Out Roleplay!
To get started, we recommend that you post in the Red Carpet to introduce to the section, and once you've posted there, you're free to go! We hope to see you around soon.
- Far Out Roleplay Team
If you're going to have a welcome PM, you gotta have more than that! You could at least explain current events going on, maybe link to the rules, or explain something about the site. There's really no point in sending that welcome PM, I would get rid of it completely, but if you insist on keeping it you should take my suggestions above.
😉 I don't see anything out of place in your appearance, probably because you still got the default theme.
Ratios
As I have already mentioned your activity is not great. You have 360 posts at this moment, this works out at 18 posts per day. Which is not too bad but there is certainly room for improvement here. To improve this you should try a few exchanges, maybe an active for active, and ask your friends to join. And of course, advertise everywhere! Be persistent and more members will come. You have 31 registered members, one of which is me so I won't count that, which brings it down to 30. This works out at 12 posts per member, which could be better. The higher your average is the more loyal your members are, and having loyal members that stay and post is always a good thing.
Now moving on to your layout. You have nineteen boards, which should really be brought down to around twelve. What I would do is have three categories – your site related (which would contain announcements, introductions, etc), your on topic category, and your off topic category, as well as the server category you have. I see you have a server improvement category, so I would assume this is a forum for some kind of game server? Knowing that you may need a couple more boards than twelve which is okay but still improvements can be made. Is there a difference between general discussion and community discussion? Those could be merged. Then I see you have the Factions and Organisations category at the bottom, this appears to be your on topic category, so I would move it further up because it is more important. You could probably merge the 'In Character Section' category into that one as well. I would remove the graphics board and the videos/screenshots board as well, or maybe make them sub boards in general. This would reduce your layout quite a bit.
🙂
Posts
All the staff posts that I can see are a good length would good spelling and grammar, which is excellent!
🙂 Posts by members are of decent quality as well as far as I can tell, and I don't see spam anywhere which is good. However, after going into five of your introductions, not a single one of those members has more than one post. Why are they not sticking around? This is something you should find out and fix. Perhaps that will change if you take the suggestions in this review
😉 Now back to your staff posts, as I said they are good quality, but quantity, not so much from all of them. James and Cameron are posting around well both with a good number of posts, but Sam only has one post made on the day he joined, and he hasn't been back since. What is the point in having him if he is not active? It just makes the staff team look bad. Two administrators should be enough for you at the moment anyway.
Content
Most of your board descriptions are of decent length and have good spelling and grammar. But I notice Community discussions doesn't have a description at all. How am I supposed to know what to post there? My only suggestion for the rest of them is perhaps make them a bit longer, try to aim for 2-3 sentences each. You should make sure you have a minimum of 5 threads in each section as well, some of them have none, people need something to reply to. Most of the time members don't just join and create the threads for you. Most threads right now are in announcements and general, both with over 20 each. You should work on getting more threads in the roleplay sections as that is what your forum is about. And lastly, your rules – where are they? I don't see them in your announcements or on the menu. I do see a rules subboard but with no threads in there. Does that mean I can do whatever I want? It is important to have some rules, so you should write some, and post them on the menu or make a global announcement. I think having an entire sub board is a waste of space.
Final Remarks
Good start, the next thing I would do is get a new theme up. Then you need to work on getting members to stay. Just advertise, advertise advertise! You could try asking your friends to join or having a contest as well. Good luck!
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