Your Forum Review
First Impressions & Appearance - (Out of 20)
From the top to bottom, your forum is absolutely gorgeous. IP.Board is a great software, and I have personally bought from Skinbox before, and they make some of the best skins around. What I'm trying to say is that it was a very nice choice. Everything is professional and easy to read. Your header in particular is great. Your logo is simple but effective. I did have a few visual hiccups, however. In one instance, I loaded a page, and a green "Loading…" bar appeared at the top of your forum. It didn't go away. It wasn't apparent what it was loading. Another thing is the "X" button for the sidebar. Why is it located in the far right end of the screen? Couldn't it be put ON the sidebar to be more clear what it was going to do? These are all very minor things though, and would certainly not drive me away from the forum at all. The only major error I got was this:
"500 - Internal Server Error
This is a temporary server error.
Please try to reload the webpage later.
If you are the webmaster of this site please log in to Cpanel and check the Error Logs. You will find the exact reason for this error there.
Common reasons for this error are:
• Incorrect file/directory permissions: Above 755. In order files to be processed by the webserver, their permissions have to be equal or below 755. You can update file permissions with a FTP client or through cPanel's File Manager.
• Incorrect Apache directives inside .htaccess file. Make sure you have not specified unsupported directives inside the local .htaccess file. Such include PHP settings and Apache module settings.
"
That was a bit more serious. I'm not sure what caused it.
(Scored 18/20)
Site Layout - (Out of 20)
Let me start with the bad stuff first. First off was the chatbox. It, appearing on all pages, is annoying. It should be kept to the index. Let's face it, how popular is it really? It just seems to take up unnecessary space, even when minimized. Second, your posts are massive. You have too much info under the username. Moods, awards, etc. It's too much. Limit some of that to profiles.
Not everything was bad, of course. The layout of your URLs was very search engine friendly, which is a major plus. Your actual layout and organization of your forums is very good. (However, the automative forum seems really out of place for a board of your topic. It isn't even that popular.) I also liked the fact that your forum is fluid. That's great for people like me on larger monitors.
(Scored 17/20)
Statistics and Activity - (Out of 20)
For having been open only about a month, your activity is phenomenal. You have almost 10,000 posts, which is a great achievement. Thankfully it doesn't look like you've done something crazy and had the staff overpost, which is good. There are some forums that seem to be lacking in activity, though. This includes the clan zone and "Icon Request" forum. You should try to either merge the less active forums, remove them, or promote activity. It looks out-of-place to have those random forums with no activity.
(Scored 17/20)
Staff Moderation - (Out of 20)
You don't appear to be overstaffed. You only have a couple of admins, which is good for a forum of your size. You aren't really overstaffed or anything bad like that. Your staff actively posts around. Your forum seemed pretty spam free, so it appears that they're doing their job. Having the staff bios is nice, but it doesn't really tell what they do specifically or their duties on the forum. That would have been nice to have seen. Overall, great job though.
(Scored 19/20)
Spelling/Grammar & Professionalism - (Out of 20)
The only spelling errors I noticed were very minor. For example, "Got a pack you want to submit? Post it here to get feedback before its sorted into the correct forum." should be, "Got a pack you want to submit? Post it here to get feedback before it's sorted into the correct forum." Anything like that is minor. However, you should definitely double-check your forum descriptions for problems like that. People are very picky when it comes to spelling and grammar.
(Scored 18/20)
Total Score - 89 (Out of 100)
Final Remarks: Your forum was great overall.
What was most liked about the website/forums: Nearly everything.
What was disliked most about the website/forums: A few visual hickups.
How could I get you (The Reviewer) to join my website? Nothing would stop me.
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