Your Forum Review
First Impressions & Appearance
When a potential user visits your forum, you want them to have the best first impressions possible. My first impressions definitely weren't the best, so there is room for improvement, and I will try my best to help you turn these first impressions into the best first impressions possible. First of all, I think you need to work on your logo. It's plain, and the gradient on the text doesn't really match your forum's color scheme. I like the slogan text reflection, it looks sleek though. Also, the logo is just text; I think an icon or mascot would look nice. Your forum had a mascot that looked similar to Pacman, I thought that was pretty cool, I don't really understand why you removed it. Just be creative with your logo. I noticed that your forum still claims to be "The Best GD Forum On The Web," it'd be nice if that was true, but it isn't, so I don't really feel it makes sense to make such claims considering your forum's age and activity as of right now. That slogan is comparable to commercials you see on television, making false claims. It's false-advertising. Secondly, your favicon doesn't really have anything to do with your forum. I would expect that to be on an exchange forum maybe, but not a general discussion forum. You should get something like a chat icon, or a mascot if you get one. If all else fails, the favicon still would look nice with just "GD" on it, as long as it matches the forum.
Thirdly, I am seeing a bit of an identity issue on your forum. What is the real name of your forum? Some people call the forum "GD Forum," some people call the forum "General Discussion," and the title currently says "GD Community For All" on your forum right now. You need to decide on one name, and stick with it. Also, your title should say "Forum Name" or "Forum Name - Slogan." The title is how people identify sites, so your title should have your actual forum name on it. Fourthly, you really should get new ranks. The ranks are nice, but they don't match the forum and they're not very professional. I think I said this in your last review, but you still have the same ranks. Why? There are tons of fantastic rank sets on places like
ForumRanks.Net and if you want custom ones, I am sure someone might be wiling to create you some really nice ranks in the "Graphics Exchange" board if you were to pay FP$. Fifthly, your menu looks like a menu you would see on a website back in the 90s. It's hard to read the text when you roll your mouse over it, and the menu pattern is hard to see as well. I do like the roll-over drop down menus though. I think you should change the main menu to white text like the "Forums" roll-over drop down menu, it looks nice. Finally, your forum really seems to be having color scheme conflicts. You have white, gray, three or four different kinds of blues (including the logo), black, and then the background which you can barely see looks like a dark green type of color. You need to find a common ground with the color scheme, as your color scheme seems to be a multitude of colors thrown together. Anyways, that was my first impressions and thoughts of your forum's appearance. Good luck making these improvements.
(Score: 13/20)
Site Layout
Your layout is pretty nice, but there are a few changes I think would be for the better of your forum. First of all, I think you should eliminate all those sub-boards in the "Webmaster's Lounge." The final three sub-boards should definitely be removed as they can easily be added into the discussions on the main board. The advertisements being in the main board would probably look a bit sloppy; I would consider just get rid of advertisement topics completely. If you want to keep them, then that one sub-board would probably be okay though. I think you could at least rename the sub-board though, the title should hint at what the sub-board is for. So, I think the sub-board should have a title that says something like "Advertisement Center," "Promotion Board," etc. Next, with Netflix growing daily, I think you should really consider adding a "Netflix" sub-board in the "Hit The TV" board. Just about everyone has Netflix these days, and it wouldn't surprise me if that sparked activity a bit because it's something all audiences can relate to. You could discuss certain things available on Netflix, have threads like "What did you last watch on Netflix?," etc. I think that would have a lot of potential. Lastly, I think you could have the "Paranormal" board fit under "Your Stories & Dreams." Overall, I feel your layout has its faults, I wish you the best of luck improving your layout.
(Scored 15/20)
Statistics and Activity
As of right now, your forum has accumulated 2,594 posts in 1,021 threads and 81 members. Your forum is about two and a half months old. Those aren't great statistics, but they're not bad statistics. Your forum seems to have slowed down is why I say this. Your forum had around 1,000 posts after one week being opened when I first reviewed your forum, and you have gotten about 1,500 posts since then; around two months later. It's normal for forums to slow down after the excitement of the opening sort of fades away, but you really need to work on restoring it back to the great activity it had going in the first couple weeks being opened. You have 81 members, and I'd say about ten of them are still somewhat active. You should try your best to get the other sixty members (or so) back on your forum. It's hard, but it's not impossible. A nice competition or contest that you can advertise while advertising your forum on places like here for example could work well. Sometimes, just a simple email reminder will do the trick though. I think you should try a few different things, and see what works the best. Just keep in mind, don't send email reminders too often, that is more likely to scare members away. Also, contests and competitions should be done rarely, it's the rarity of the event that makes it special. Good luck improving your statistics and activity.
(Scored 16/20)
Staff Moderation
Your forum's staff team appears to be moderating effectively, if moderating is really necessary as of right now. Your forum isn't even three months old yet and has less than 100 members, so I wouldn't expect too much moderation going on. According to the "Forum Team" page, your forum has a total of five staff members. One staff member is a Super Moderator, one staff member is an administrator (you), and three staff members are Support Moderators. Five is plenty of staff members. I think you should probably shorten the staff team down to at least three if possible. Your forum only has few active individuals, and all of these current active individuals do not need to be staff. Also, I don't really understand why you have three Support Moderators, that's a bit too many for that one staff group. Lastly, I feel you should have "Administrator" show up before "Super Moderator" on "Forum Team page;" you should have the staff groups in order from highest staff positions to lowest staff positions. Overall, great job on moderating, but some changes to the staff team should be considered. Good luck!
(Scored 17/20)
Spelling/Grammar & Professionalism
All the staff members appear to be posting with professionalism for the most part, but I see a lack of professionalism in some posts. I am seeing posts made by staff members with simple spelling and grammar mistakes. There is missing punctuation, capitalization errors, etc in many posts. Staff members should really try their best to not do such things. Staff members influence the regular members. If a staff member is making low-quality posts, the regular members will think, "Oh, we can do that then..." and make low-quality posts. If the staff members make high-quality posts, the regular members should have a pretty nice impression and feel that should try their best to not have low-quality posts either. Low-quality posts by staff members can be taken as unprofessional. That means part of professionalism is just making that extra effort to not make mistakes often. Now, let's get to your board descriptions. First off, your board descriptions are pretty short, and a bit uncreative. You should "spice" all those board descriptions up. How do you do that? It's actually very simple, you can start your board descriptions with questions, facts, quotes, jokes, or even an opinion, if it's not too bias. Secondly, I see a few board descriptions that have capitalization mistakes. The first sentence of the "Cyber Cafe" board description has unnecessary capitalization and I think "TV" needs to be capitalized in the "Hit The TV" board description. Lastly, the word I am seeing many times in your board descriptions is "discuss." There are many words that have the same or similar meanings to "discuss," so you should mix it up a bit. Overall, I think you need to talk to your staff members regarding the quality of posts and read over your board descriptions and important topics some more. Good luck.
(Scored 13/20)
Total Score - 74/100
Final Remarks
Strong Points
Your forum's active userbase (the forum isn't too active in general though), theme for the most part (a few things could be improved), and staff moderation (I feel you could limit the amount of staff members though).
Things to Improve
your forum's color scheme, spelling/grammar & professionalism, graphics, and layout.
After reading your review, please click here to rate our service.
The Team Leader will deduct the cash from your account shortly.
