Foundation - Review + Feedback

Geoffrey

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Website Name: Foundation
Website Link: http://foundationzb.com
When was your website founded?: Opened to the public Saturday, June 13, 2015 (Today)
Which would you like?: Standard Review -> Advanced Review
Notes: #BetterRedThanDead
 
Re: Foundation - Standard Review + Feedback

Nice community. Good luck with it! 🙂
Not really a huge fan of the way 'Where your forum begins' is positioned, but nice theme.
 
Re: Foundation - Standard Review + Feedback

Your Review is In Progress!


Thank you for requesting feedback. I have tagged your thread, and will finish an official review within at most 72 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.
 
Re: Foundation - Standard Review + Feedback



Foundation
Review by Cierra


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First Impressions
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When I first visit Foundation I see a light pleasant theme with a nice amount of forums. I don't really like the favicon because it doesn't seem to represent what the forum is about, it just looks like a play button. A colored square that matched your theme with Foundation's name abbreviated as "F" or "FZB" would look a lot better in my opinion. I like the quick navigation bar and boxes. I am not a fan of the Top 10 Posters Today and Top 10 Overall Posters links at the bottom of the index because they don't seem very important to me, but there not a big problem. Overall Foundation gives me a good first impression and if I was a guest I would join (as I have already done.)
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Average



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Design Quality
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As stated in First Impressions, I really like the theme. It is pleasant to the eyes and the colors are light and refreshing. When you have notifications, I think it would look better to have them "follow you" than just stay in a static location. Here is a screenshot of that:
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The notifications stay in the exact location no matter where you scroll. In the categories, I think it would look better to not have the viewers column, but I am not sure if you are able to with Zeta Boards so disregard that if it is not applicable. I notice that you only have one theme; Foundation Light. To cater to everyone, adding a dark theme and then a theme that is very different from both of those would give everyone a choice. Clicking on UserCP leads you no where, I am not sure what's up with that. There are also unneeded spaces that could be removed in the UserCP and Inbox drop down menus. Here are the spaces that should be removed:
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Good





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Originality
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I like how you are holding a posting contest, a caption contest, resource contest,and a opening werewolf. In my opinion, the posting contest and resource contest are going to better than the opening werewolf. I was surprised to see that topic/game honestly, to me it seems like something that belongs better on an role-playing or gaming forum. I do like how creative it is though, so I'll give you that. I think a monthly design contest would be cool. You would set a theme for that month, and users would have to create something around it, like a signature, logo, etc.. This method could be applied to themes as well. You would be getting a ton of Zeta Board themes for the database that way too. I think that there are not enough categories in the Promotion Directory, I would like to see some others such as: Education/Culture, Sports,Gaming, Blogs/Personal... instead of lumping thing in "General/Entertainment" and "Miscellaneous".
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Excellent




Final Remarks
I enjoyed reviewing Foundation. I think it will be a good resource for ZetaBoard forum owners and just forum owners in general. Some changes need to be made but the forum is heading in the right direction. Good luck with your forum Geoffrey!​


Your Score
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Re: Foundation - Standard Review + Feedback

Thanks Cierra! Great review. 🙂

First Impressions
- FavIcon can definitely be changed.
- I don't know why you think the top 10 lists are pointless. They show a unique view of stats, daily and overall, and it's not like they're in the way or anything.
- I don't see much in your comments here that could be "average"

Design
- I'm not able to change how notifications appear on the page, that's a mod by another developer and I don't have permission to alter that. Also, while they may not follow you as you suggest, I feel staying static on the page at all times is just as good.
- We are working on a dark theme and that will be added soon.
- On the drop down menus, there are links that appear in the empty space you see for those with increased permissions (staff/admin), so that is why we can't make that menu shorter because then it would cut off the extra links.
- The User CP link is part of the same external mod as the notifications, so again, out of my control and cannot change.

Originality
- I'm a bit confused, are you saying Werewolf is a good or bad thing? I don't really see how it's bad, and you contradicted yourself a bit.
- More contests will certainly be coming.
- Promotion Directory will expand are more forums are submitted to it, we just don't want a bunch of empty sub forums right now.
 
Re: Foundation - Standard Review + Feedback

Cash has been Deducted!


Thank you for using the Forum Promotion review service. We have deducted 100 FP$ from your account in exchange for conducting a Standard Review. You can request another review after 14 days.

 
Re: Foundation - Standard Review + Feedback

Anyone have any other feedback for Foundation? We've been making quite a few changes lately. 🙂
 
Re: Foundation - Standard Review + Feedback

Like Cierra I also feel that play button is not suited to your niche at all, another thing that bugs me slightly is the notification stays until u click x (referring to someone who likes your post in the footer), the last like i received is 11 hours ago and yet its still there. If I were u i would just add it on top as alerts instead. You might want to change the icons for each forum also. Old Promotion Topics, maybe change it to Promotion Archives.

Sorry if it wasnt what you were looking for but this is the first ever forum, i kind of gave feedback to.
 
Re: Foundation - Standard Review + Feedback

Marked as staff needed for advanced re-review.

Thanks. :heart:
 
Your Review is In Progress!


Thank you for requesting feedback. I have tagged your thread, and will finish an official review within at most 96 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 30 days after this review is completed.
 
I love the color scheme, and very nicely laid out.

Only thing I might change, and it is more of a personal opinion maybe center the banner and also the affiliate buttons at the bottom?
 


Foundation
Review by PoH


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First Impressions
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Foundation, while logged in has a very clear theme. There is nothing that I would classify as "poor", or anything close to that. However, I'm not overly impressed with what I see. All the colors flow well together, and everything looks exactly how most people would say a forum should look. At the same time, that's the one issue I see with Foundation. While everything is picture perfect to my eyes, it's almost too perfect. There is nothing that really sets Foundation an image at first sight. Have you thought about adding some more to your logo, specifically an image? While you already have a good, clear logo. When I see your logo for the first time, it just doesn't set a memorable image that will make me want to come back. Adding an image to the side of your logo (or maybe even inside the logo's text), would help set an image into the head of your first time viewers, as well as your current members.
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Good



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Design Quality
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The green, gray, and orange colors on Foundation flow extremely well together. This is a very good color scheme to have, and it's also something that very few promotion/admin forums use, which is something that can help you brand Foundation, because it's obvious when I look at Foundation exactly what site I'm looking at.

My main suggestion for improvement is your category icons, or lack of therefore. Your default theme already has a spot for some custom icons to be added, but you've unfortunately never added them. Custom icons look very good if you can get a set that's unique to all of your boards. It's something that would significantly help your index look better.
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Good



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Site Statistics
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Above all, it seems obvious to me Foundation is a resource forum. Resource forums very rarely seem to be active because most people aren't actually interested in the forums, they're only interested in the resources. It looks Foundation has completely broken this mold. You have created not only an active forum: You've created an active resource community, which is something that I've not seen here on ForumPromotion, ever. The reason you've done such a great job of creating a community is because you engage the community. Whenever I say "engage the community", I mean that you (and your other staff members) have been spending your valuable time interacting with the community by posting on the forum and doing your best to get to know your community on a personal level.
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Good




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Originality
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Having an original webmaster forum is something that very few have. Again, Foundation does a great job of breaking the mold most forums fail to do. You've done a great job of creating your own forum niche, so to say. There are plenty of resource forums that you can find; but very few of these resource forums have a community quite like yours. This is major plus. Whenever you have a resource forum, you need to have resources for your members to download, and eventually you'll need to lean on your members to create some of the resources for your forum. This is where the community aspect comes in. People want to create things for their forum friends, instead of making them for whoever decides to download them. So, naturally, people will make more resources, because their friends can download them.
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Excellent



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Site Structure
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Your site is structured very nicely. Everything is easy to find and the index has your core forums at the top, and then your discussion forums at the top. This is something that some forums seem to he shying away from, but Foundation is doing a very good job of allowing guests to see the main niche's forums before they see some of the other forums (like the general discussion forums) so a guest could find out exactly what your forum is about as fast as possible.
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Excellent



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Spelling & Professionalism
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I hate to continue repeating myself, but I see absolutely nothing wrong in your announcements or forum descriptions. However, while this is not a spelling or grammar issue as much as something that just looks inconsistent on your forum. Some of the forum descriptions are very long, while others are aren't long at all. While this is not a major issue, it would look more professional and eye appeasing if you kept your forum descriptions close to the same length overall. It's something that's very nitpicky, but still worth mentioning since your grammar and spell is so good already.
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Excellent



Final Remarks
I'm sorry that this review had very few suggestions. Foundation is a very good site that just needs some time to grow into your full potential. As long as you keep the resources rolling out, as well as a semi active forum Foundation will succeed even more than it already is. Best of luck, Geoffrey!​


Your Score
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You never fail to wow us with your amazing forums, Geoff! I can tell you've put a lot of thought and work into this, like you do with many of your others. It's very unique in its own way and does not seem as generic as most webmaster forums do. I absolutely love the color scheme as well. I feel as though it lacks picture-based content. I, personally, would feel more intrigued to register if you had some nice little images. Maybe a few forum icons would work? Either way, I love it. Awesome work.
 
Thanks everyone for the feedback and thanks for the review John!

The staff team is already discussing the review and making changes, and we already have a new logo added to our theme. Check it out!
 
I think your favicon should keep the same shape (leaf), but be orange or green to match the rest of your site. Blue feels out of place.

The top of your forum is great, but it doesn't show off any popular threads. I think visitors will be more likely to click on a link that has an interesting title about a recent event or current discussion on the forum than a link that goes to an announcement of a forum they're just visiting for the first time. For new visitors, or guests, it'd be better to show actual discussions.

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Unless ZetaBoards prohibits it, there should be a setting to show a different list of links depending on whether someone is a guest or a logged in member. That way you could show guests some links to interesting discussions or recent threads, and show announcements/updates to logged in members!
 
I think Google search result listing for your site is bare and hard to get idea of its content. User will skip it. Perhaps you should add more text info in heading of site.
 

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Thanks for posting, finland-talk. As we are new, we are of course still working on and developing our SEO and we don't expect perfect search results over night. 🙂
 
Yeah I agree that like said above maybe get a favicon that is similar to the one in your logo which would be great. It's not the most important but it would be good to match the colour of your theme. Personally I'm not a huge fan of zeta board forums as they all look the same to me as even though your theme colours are different it just looks like the same old zetaboards theme. Discussions are good and there is activity in your forum which is always good
 
kingcool52 said:
Yeah I agree that like said above maybe get a favicon that is similar to the one in your logo which would be great. It's not the most important but it would be good to match the colour of your theme. Personally I'm not a huge fan of zeta board forums as they all look the same to me as even though your theme colours are different it just looks like the same old zetaboards theme. Discussions are good and there is activity in your forum which is always good
ZB forums all look alike in the same way that all forums look alike. They are serving the same purpose and that's pretty poor feedback honestly.

Favicon has already been changed by the way.
 
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