Full Forum Review

Jerlene

The Senseless Blogger
Joined
Jan 12, 2011
Messages
5,687
Reaction score
733
FP$
5,945
Name of Forum: Webmaster Forum
Forum Link: http://www.webmastertalkforums.com
Type of Review ( Quick Review / Forum Review / Blog Review ): Forum Review
Date Forum Opened: It's a forum with old databases and new ones. I think the oldest is 2005.
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Your Forum Review




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First Impressions & Appearance

The first thing I notice upon entering your forum as a guest is the very large Google advertisement that is planted right under the sub navigation bar. To a guest and potential user, a large advertisement before anything else really doesn't leave too good of a first impression. Even though the advertisement disappears as soon as you log in, it could scare away some guests. As I view the rest of the forum, I see that you have approximately seven advertisements all together around the index. Since you obviously have a very large member base and many guests, it's not surprising that you want to have that many advertisements -- but I think you have way too many in plain sight on the index. Many people strongly dislike having too many advertisements on the index, as it makes them feel like the administrator(s) are only running the forum for their own gain. I would suggest that you seriously consider replacing some advertisements so that they're all not just straight out on the index page. Especially the large Google advertisement below the sub navigation bar; I think it would look much better directly under the forums boards. That way the guests at least see some content before an advertisement.

The favicon -- it's not good that you have the default VBulletin favicon on your board. For a board of your size, I would expect most things in the design aspect to be unique. Thousands (more or less) are using that favicon that your forum is using as I type this. That's not good. You should make a unique favicon yourself, get someone to make you a favicon, or get a free professionally made one from a sharing site (they're not unique, but they are less used and a bit better looking than the default VBulletin favicon). If you're looking for a free professionally made one, I would recommend you looking at the site Free Favicon.

I think you should make list of users who have visited your fora today collapsible by default or make it "users who have visited in the last 12 hours" or something of that sort. Frankly, the list of users who have visited your fora today stretches the page and makes it longer than it should be. Many people (myself included) find having something meaningless and something that doesn't contribute to the forums content like that to be irritating.

I really like your banner. Forgive such a weak paragraph, but I can't find anything else to say about it. It's simply lovely. I also really like your forums color scheme. The colors all look rather nice together, flattering each other.

I think that the forum body looks kind of squished together with the widgets right now. I think it would be a good idea if the widgets were collapsible via user control panel, or if you made the widgets width a little smaller. It's the content that the members are at your forum for, not for the widgets.
(Score: 13/20)

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Site Layout

I think that you should make the "Development Forum" or another forum the first forum on the board index. In the title of the board it says "Webmaster Forums | Webmaster Forum for Coding, SEO, Tutorials and More!". It does say "and more" in the title, but since it specifically mentions coding by name, I think you should have the "Development Forum" or one of the other boards that were mentioned by name be first.

There's a tiny line that randomly goes through the word "Backlinks" and through the search bar in the navigation bar. (See picture below.)
2d6pssy.webp

Other than that, I believe that all your forums have good organization, and are properly placed.
(Scored 15/20)

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Statistics and Activity

At the time I view this, the statistics are as follows:
Threads: 24,053, Posts: 126,762, Members :35,931.

From a glance, those are really good statistics. But looking closer, the average amount of posts per user is only about three posts. That's not good. That means that there are a lot of accounts that have zero or only one, two, or three posts. I would recommend that you hold a contest, send out emails (in a non-spam manner), or find some way to get users who have registered an account on your fora to come back. Encourage your users to post more. For the amount of users you have, your post statistics should and could be much higher than they currently are.

In a nutshell, the amount of users you have is great, the amount of posts..not so much. That's not to say that you don't have an active fora or that your fora doesn't have good activity, because your forums activity is great and very active. But it could be better. And there's always room to improve your statistics, no matter how active you are.
(Scored 15/20)

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Staff Moderation

According to the staff list on your fora, you have two administrators, and six super moderators. I'm actually surprised that you don't have more than that considering the amount of members and the amount of forums you have. I think that you have a nice amount of moderators (just enough to cover the forum, so that there's almost always going to be at least on of them online, but not to much). But, I also don't think that it would hurt if you welcomed one or two new super moderators onto your team.
(Scored 19/20)

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Spelling/Grammar & Professionalism

Other than the very tiny things I am about to mention, can't find any grammatical or spelling errors in any of the forum descriptions in the forum index. That, along with the fact that every forum (and sub forum) has a description is great.

However, in the "C Functions" sub forum and the "AdSense News" sub forum, I notice that the description is only a sentence fragment and does not contain a period at the end of it.

Also, in the "Games" sub forum, the description is "WebmasterTalkForums sandbox.. game corner. Feel like a little kid in here. !important". Why is there the word "!important" at the end of that? (and why does it have a lower case letter 'i' when it would be the start of a new sentence? And why does it have a '!' at the beginning of the sentence?)
(Scored 18/20)

Total Score - 80/100


Final Remarks

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Strong Points

The appearance of it, the forums descriptions.
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Things to Improve

The amount of advertisements, the little mistakes I mentioned earlier in some of the forum descriptions.
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