Feedback+review- The Game Zone

[Lamont]

Hi, I would like to request feedback and a review for my forum so that I know what we can do better.

Website Name: The Game Zone
Website Link: http://thegame-zone.com/index.php
When was your website founded?: December 19th 2013
Which would you like?: Standard Review
Notes: Thank you for your feedback and please know that anything you say will definitely be taken into consideration

 

[Optic]

Hello Lamont, overall I think it looks decent. Here are a few areas which could do with improvement:


1) Your scrolling "Last Threads" box is not respecting permissions. I saw a thread called "Administration we need to do something!" from the Administration Discussion appear in the list, but when I clicked on it I could not view it. I assume this is meant to be a staff-only thread, so it should be hidden for guests and normal members.

2) Links in the "Last Threads" box result in them opening in a new window, you should consider changing this as this can become annoying.

3) Guests are only able to view the first post in all threads. I noticed you have a message in each thread that says:

Unfortunately you do not have sufficient rights to view replies in this thread.

I feel this is a turn-off and may discourage Guests from registering to become active posters if they're unable to see what types of posts the community posts in threads. If you want to keep this feature, consider changing the message to be more friendly and encourage guests to join instead of saying "You do not have sufficient rights"

4) You have excessive widgets. Do you really need a calendar, clock and translator? All these can slow down the page and add clutter.

5) Many members are showing up with "Invalid Avatar URL" as their avatars. You need to address this as it looks out of place:



I think if you can address these issues that will help to improve your forum. 🙂 Best of luck.

 

[Atrox]

Your Review is In Progress!​

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Thank you for requesting feedback. I have tagged your thread, and will finish an official review within at most 48 hours. In the meantime, you will receive informal feedback from other reviewers and members at Forum Promotion. Once your official review is complete, you will be free to ask questions and receive feedback so long as your website remains only, and this topic remains reasonably active. You will also be able to request a re-review 14 days after this review is completed.

Thank you, and good luck!

 

[Atrox]

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The Game Zone
Review by Atrox​

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First Impressions
[note]========== BEGIN - First Impressions ==========[/note]
When loading up your forum, I saw the main body of the forum load up and I immediately recognized that this was the theme designed by iAndrew for gaming forums. This is a theme that I absolutely love and I wasn't sure why Andrew gave it away for free. I could only see down to the bottom of the "Latest Threads" box, and with what I saw I was impressed. I loved the background that you added and the logo was nice and centralized. I thought the "Latest Threads" box was very useful although it can be a bit distracting, I was glad to see that you can slow it down. However, I think that the Santa and the little character on the right wishing members and visitors a happy new year are a bit outdated and need to be removed. I'd also like to add that "TGZ WISHS YOU" is not how it should have been written. You may also want to change "Speed Down" to "Slow Down". Other than that, TGZ gives off a great first impression.
[note]========== END - First Impressions ==========[/note]
Good

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Design Quality
[note]========== BEGIN - Design Quality ==========[/note]
As I said in the above paragraph, I love this theme made by iAndrew and I was immediately able to identify it the second that it loaded up. I had noticed that you made quite a few modifications to it along with adding a bunch of sidebar boxes. Whilst these sidebar boxes can be very useful, I think that you've overdone it. First of all, the "Merry Christmas" box is no longer needed, Christmas was quite a while ago now. Along with the "TGZ Clock", I'm not interested in what time it is for the TGZ Owner, I'm interested in my time. If I wanted to know what time it was there, I'd check the default time settings. Here we are, "Translator", yet another box that isn't needed. Most browsers nowadays offer page translations as soon as you load up the forum, there's no need to provide that. Next, the "TGZ Calender", that can go on another page if you really feel it's needed at all. I doubt you'll even use it that often. If you're just going to leave default dates on there, it won't even be worthwhile putting it on another page because I can easily check my own calendar. Finally, the "Forum Stats" box way too big and not needed at all. You already have the latest threads at the top and MyBB has the default forum statistics page. Many of these things ruin the theme for me.
[note]========== END - Design Quality ==========[/note]
Poor

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Site Structure
[note]========== BEGIN - Site Structure ==========[/note]
I think that you have way too many different forums, there is no wonder why quite a few of them haven't been posted in for a while. You really need to learn to use sub-forums because the "Console Zone" is especially overloaded. I don't see many small gaming forums that have an individual forum for such a wide range of gaming consoles, fair enough PS, Xbox and PC should have their own forum but the rest could maybe be put into one forum with sub-forums. Also, I don't get why "Game Development" is in the "Console Zone". Maybe that should be relocated. Here is another bunch of forums that don't need their own forum, maybe you should rearrange and rename some of the categories and forums so that you can merge some of it together. Maybe the DS Zone could at some point become a sub-forum of a Nintendo forum with the Wii discussion forum and the same with the PSP and GBA forums. I think that the worst category for unnecessary amounts of forums is the "Miscellaneous" category, you don't want an off-topic forum to have that many forums, remember that the use of sub-forums can be very important. I suggest going to the drawing board with your staff team and coming up with a new structure.
[note]========== END - Site Structure ==========[/note]
Very Poor

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Final Remarks​

There are so many gaming forums out there. I think that a unique site structure could be used to your advantage along with you thinking of some features to add that other gaming forums do not have, or do not use very often. I also think that you need to sort out all of the side boxes because there is no need for all of those. I wish you all the best of luck and I hope that these suggestions will be of great help to you! 🙂​

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Your Score​

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[Lamont]

Thank you Optic for your feedback I found it extremely helpful. We've have begun fixing some of the issues that you mentioned. As for the Scrolling Last Threads Box, the other admins and I have no Idea how to stop staff related threads from appearing there or at least block them from normal members/ guests view.

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Atrox, thanks a lot for your review. As hard as it is for me to say it, I never noticed that some of the forums were in the wrong place. We have taken your consideration for the structure of the forum to heart and have begun to fix it.

 

[Atrox]

Atrox, thanks a lot for your review. As hard as it is for me to say it, I never noticed that some of the forums were in the wrong place. We have taken your consideration for the structure of the forum to heart and have begun to fix it.

I am glad that you enjoyed your review. 🙂

 

[Excommunicado]

Your link directs you to the portal which personally I find very annoying. First thing that comes to eye is the background it's distracting and too crowded up. The logo is actually not very bad and if you could have a suiting background, you could do pretty well. The latest threads bit is also annoying, it's another distracting feature with it scrolling up automatically. At the time of me viewing your forum, you still have Christmas images/features which should've been removed a few days ago as Christmas is long-by over. I really don't see much point of the clock. While looking at the section images, they don't link up with the section at all. As far as I notice it's totally random and that is a big negative. Also the width of the section images makes the whole forum look unprofessional and crowded.

You have around 7,640 posts at this current time which isn't bad but seeing you opened in 2013, I think you could've been better. This is supported by the fact you average under 20 posts per day which isn't good at all and the forum needs to fasten up more. I also see various sections which haven't been posted in for quite a long time and I think you need to get the activity going more.

The Game Zone looks pretty cool but there are a lot of things you need to fix and work on. If you can improve the theme, you have a pretty established board, you could make it far. Good luck 😉

 

[Deleted member 17779]

Cash has been Deducted!​

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[Lamont]

Thank you for your feedback 007.

The link thing was an accident, I'm used to just putting in the site's name.

The staff and members find the background pretty cool, we are looking into adding another theme so we will definitely take into account of overcrowding the background.

The christmas stuff while distracting is not that big of a deal right now, it will be removed we're just trying to get the main stuff situated first.

As for the section images, I agree they definitely do need some work but only for the sections that do not have a good image. The Miscellaneous & Entertainment & Multimedia Zone fforums are the main ones I see that needs to be fixed.

 

[Annadog40]

The Last Thread Tittles are a little hard to read because of the color. I recommend that it be changed to a lighter blue

 

[fantanoice]

I don't want to sound harsh but I personally think the banner looks like something somebody would make in paint by finding a bunch of Google pictures and putting them side by side. In terms of design, it just looks really inconsistent.

I think the clock really unnecessary considering I already have one on my computer and it's wasting space that could be used for other means.

The 'About Us' widget should probably be higher considering it's an important thing (moreso than the others IMO), and I think it should be condensed down to only 4-6 lines. At the moment it is a giant, overwhelming wall of text without paragraphs and makes me not want to read it.

 

[Cosmic]

I was very impressed when the page first loaded and I saw the banner. It was well made, in my opinion. The tagline is a bit difficult to read, however. The next thing I noticed, though, was the chatbox, which I do not like. The auto-scrolling is distracting, in my opinion, and for some reason there are white boxes under each message (for guests at least) which look very odd on the black theme. Also, I noticed a few broken links beside forums. Overall, I think your theme does look good, though.

Good luck! 🙂

 

[Geoffrey]

A couple things:

- Dark theme is dark. Do you have a light theme available to members (don't see one as a guest, so I'm guessing not)? Look into adding one, as even on gaming forums some people don't like dark themes.

- Your individual forum icons (with the gaming characters) is a great idea, but they look awkward only taking up half of the cell they're in. Maybe make them taller so they fill their box, or at least vertically center them so there's equal space on the top as there is on the bottom?

 

[Lamont]

Hi Geofrrey,

We do not currently have a light theme, we are looking into getting a light one.

We are in the process of fixing the icons.

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We got rid of some of the sidebar stuff and the about me section will be fixed up soon.

 

[Korora]

Looks like a pretty good forum for a simple gaming community.

But the domain was kinda a off-set for me (thegame-zone), I just don't think it looks to well with the "-" in it.

You should also remove ProSTats and go with a Latest Threads sidebar, prostats is really off looking in my opinion and it has been known to be vulnerable on the MyBB Board Software before.

I wish you good luck and success with your forum!