Site URL: http://w11.zetaboards.com/Cavaedium/index/
Review Type: Feedback + Standard Review
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Review Type: Feedback + Standard Review
Extra Notes: Thanks for this service! 😀
Feedback and Review for The Cave
- Thread starter Dregran
- Start date
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First Impressions
My first impression was "This is awesome!". It actually got me to join the first time I saw it because of it's theme which I will touch on below. I also liked the stats.
Theme
The theme is really awesome. It's got it's dark elements but also looks very well done. Great work!
Content
Content and stats are great. You seem to have every section on your board filled up correctly with a right amount of topics. Keep up the good work there.
Overall
Great forum. I see there is a few staff members which is great. Hope this forum goes well and I can see it's future potential greatly.
Rating: 9.5/10
My first impression was "This is awesome!". It actually got me to join the first time I saw it because of it's theme which I will touch on below. I also liked the stats.
Theme
The theme is really awesome. It's got it's dark elements but also looks very well done. Great work!
Content
Content and stats are great. You seem to have every section on your board filled up correctly with a right amount of topics. Keep up the good work there.
Overall
Great forum. I see there is a few staff members which is great. Hope this forum goes well and I can see it's future potential greatly.
Rating: 9.5/10
Cavaedium
Review by Teg
Review by Teg
At a glance, I love your forum's design. Some things do need work, but I'll point that out in the review. I like the uniqueness and originality you've shown with some of your board's names. That is pretty rare, and I love that.
Good
As stated, I love the overall design of your forum. By default, Royalty is the theme that I am seeing, and, therefore, this will mainly apply to that design.
I have several suggestions on how to make the design better. For starters, the logo. The logo seems dull and boring and does not grab my attention at all. The name is entertaining enough, but you need to design--or have someone else design--a better, fresher, fun, and professional logo that will grab the attention of your members and viewers. With the logo name being "The Cave," you could be creative and think of things that live in a cave and work out the logo from there. Perhaps a bear is peeking out from behind the word cave, wrapping his paw around the "e" or grabbing another letter from the top? If you like bats, or since Halloween is around the corner, you can use bats as they reside in caves. The plain text with little effect just doesn't sit well with me when I find a lot of creative and original things about your site.
The description font is tiny; you need to increase that font size. The standard font size for a website is now 12px/14px. Your description text is so small that if I were a person with awful eye site (without my glasses) I could not even try to pinpoint words. I cannot see far away, but I cannot read your text either with my glasses off unless I am literally on top of the screen. That is not good. Try increasing the font size for those descriptions of the boards, and the info box at the top. If you want to stick on the "smaller" side, go with 12px.
Font choices are always hard. However, I think your font should be consistent with everything around the forum. The type of font used in the descriptions, information center, and so forth, is perfect for the rest of your forum's fonts. I am really turned off by the drastic font change between information and links and such. You go from a smooth, beautiful font to something ragged.
Other than mentioned above, I have no ideas on how you can improve your overall design. You are doing great.
Good
Overall, the structure of your forum is okay. I found the site easy to navigate. However, there are several suggestions that I'd like to make to you. To start with, you should add a link to your forum's rules to your navigation bar. That being said, you only have one rule on your forum. Honestly, I've never seen anyone post one rule for a forum. Other than that, everything else was extremely easy to find.
I feel like many of your boards can and should be combined to make the forum look less "cluttered." My suggestions would be to move the Debate & Discussion, The Peckish Games, and The Unsanitary Sanitorium into the off-topic--the general discussion--area as sub-boards. There's no need to have them display on the main board list, especially the games and spam boards. Then, move Beep Boop into "Media" as gaming is related to media and it keeps the flow of the forum content in order. Doing this for the boards will make the forum look better and will make for an easier, less overwhelming time when people visit your forum.
Average
Spelling and Professionalism is a key point I'd like for you to focus your attention. As an administrator of a website, you should strive to be professional at all times. It does not matter if the project is supposed to be fun and light-hearted. That being said, you need to work on your spelling, grammar, and professionalism personally. On the forum's main page, where the boards are displayed, a few of your forum titles are incorrectly written. The words in titles should always be capitals unless that word is an "article" in between two other words. When I read your forum rule, the rule was not written in a complete sentence nor was it capitalized correctly. Skipping around to the "Affiliates" thread, you are missing a bunch of commas. You capitalized every letter in specific areas of the passage to provide emphasis (I am assuming that is why you have used all caps).
I did take a look at a few other staff members, but because you are the admin and the person requesting this review, I am mainly instructing you to be more grammatically and structurally, correct.
One other staff member that I see a serious problem with is "Boss." He is vulgar and uses much profanity, especially in areas that he should not. It is very unprofessional and shouldn't be allowed by staff members in the "Important Words" section. Here is the thread for which I am talking about: http://w11.zetaboards.com/Cavaedium/topic/11284903/1/. Not only is it disrespectful, but think about the different types of people and age groups that have to be subjected to that sort of thing. As a person who swears a lot, I would not join a forum where staff members do this type of stuff publicly.
Poor
Final Remarks
Overall, I think your forum could have potential. If you have not already tried using PostLoop, I think that would be a good place to start. It will help drive members, traffic, and content to your forum. Additionally, you need to clean up you and the other staff members spelling, grammar, punctuation, and professionally if you want people to take you and your site seriously. Activity seems to be pretty dull right now. I suggest a posting contest, or something else to get your users more active in the community. I wish you the best of luck.
Your Score
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The best thing I can offer as advice is if you're serious about the forum then get a domain. More people will look to join a forum that has a proper domain. I like the logo but when its placed at the right the header area just looks empty to be honest. The theme looks good too
Affiliates
