Large Forum Review
First Impressions
My first impression is uninspiring, the forum fails to draw me in, and make me want to investigate further, what I see is a rather plain looking index page, looking down the forum list I see empty topics, the busiest being the announcements section.
(Score: 9/15)
Appearance
To be honest the appearance is boring, livening it up is an easy task.
Your Banner looks a little like an after thought, I can’t see that a lot of thought or work has gone into it.
The forum icons suffer the same sort of judgement, it would be so easy to come up with something a bit more lively than arrows on different colour backgrounds.
(Score: 10/20)
Statistics and Activity
The forum is only just a month old, so it’s hard to judge how you are doing, I would have liked to see more posts spread more widely across the board, the busiest section is the announcements, you need now to put a lot more work into the other sections. The first few months are vital, you need to work hard to cram content into the forum to give prospective members something to talk about.
(Score: 11/20)
Ratios
There are four of you on the team, which I would normally say for a forum your size is way too many, however you have an alternative language forum, so you need to be able to moderate it, that is a little unique by the way.
You definitely don’t need any more moderators for some time.
(Score: 7/10)
Content
The only answer I can really give to this is that there isn’t a lot of it anywhere, now the forum is up, you really do need to start adding quality content, especially in order to keep the few members you have.
You also need to review articles you have written for spelling and grammar mistakes, the rules have at least two that I spotted in a very short time
(Score: 9/20)
Navigation
The navigation is simple and effective, it’s very easy to find your way around, and get back to where you want to be. This is helped by there not being too many sub forums
(Score:12/15)
Total Score
58/100
Final Remarks
Firstly do not be too disappointed with the low score, your forum is very new, and needs some TLC.
For me what sticks out on the forum is the wrong things, I’m strangely attracted to the punishment and bans, personally I don’t think it’s good to advertise the fact you discipline and ban people on your index page, better to place it amongst the rules, not hidden away, but available for all to read.
You need to work on the first impression and RPG forum should be “in your face”, this normally means a kick ass banner that tells people what your forum is about, without having to think about it for too long.
Some better forum icons are out there, or you can our graphics service to get some made.
Content is king, and this is something you need to work on with the help of you moderators, you could also use our posting packages to boost content.
Your categories need moving around a little, I’m not sure that “Site” and “server improvement” should be your two primary categories.
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