Your Forum Review
First Impressions & Appearance
The first thing I feel when I view your forum, is oh, just another webmaster forum. Thats the problem with forums nowadays, there are so many. I feel that you need to have something that is going to make me want to keep reading when I visit your site. Even if you have a good theme, it really isn't anything special or different and so many forums use blue now, its a bit of a worn colour.
Your logo is nice and simple, it looks professional with a good gradient and shadow on it. Nice job. The menu is good too, but does feel a little out of place. I get the feeling there is far too much going on in the header area. There are things popping out at me everywhere, and this continues throughout the whole theme. I feel rushed, in a hurry to read it all. This isn't what I am looking for when I visit a forum. I want to calmly select what I want to read and read it, not get lost along the way.
It is quite hard to put my finger on what is actually causing this feeling, one thing may be the different strong colours that are all around the board. Do you really need the RSS images on every single board? Usually I like to see a colour that stands out from the rest, like the green you use for details, but this green is too strong for my liking. A pale blue or maybe a yellow would work much better.
Suns as board icons don't really give me the feel of a webmaster forum.
(Score: 13/20)
Site Layout
The first section of your board is exactly as I would expect, you supply the normal News board and support board, yet having the Premium Member Forums in this section feels a little odd. In having this here you are making a bit of a bad advertisement for your premium membership considering the fact that there are only 2 threads in this section. I personally wouldn't buy premium membership on your site due to this.
The second section, Webmaster, contains a lot of boards. This is understandable as it is the main section for your forum. But I do feel it would be easier to manage and navigate if you split this section up into two smaller sections. Perhaps one section which is more about management, hosting and SEO and another which is more program and financial orientated. Having said that, most of the boards have hardly any threads, which makes me wonder why you need to seperate all of the different discussion points. I would suggest cutting down on the amount of boards you have until your forum gains more posts in these areas.
In the next section you only have one board, The Marketplace. This can easily be added to the community section, it doesn't need it's own section. It is easily overlooked, when browsing quickly I first thought it was some kind of advert.
The last section, Community, contains more off-topic boards. There is an overwhelming amount of threads here compared to the rest of the board, which is a little worrying. Have a chat with your staff and put some work into getting your members posting more on the rest of your board and less in the General Chat area. A good way of starting this off is asking your staff to refrain from posting there, you and your staff are the ones that set the example on your forum, make sure you set a good one!
(Scored 10/20)
Statistics and Activity
Date Forum Opened: August 2011
Posts 8,717
Members 719
Your forum has been open for 6 months and in that time you have gained an average of 1452 posts per month. Which is a good number that you should be extremely happy with. If your forum continues to recieve this amount of posts a month then you have nothing to worry about. You have an average of 12 posts per member though, which really isn't good. For me it is quite clear what the issue is, I have found it extremely difficult to review your forum as I found it very boring to visit and read. There is nothing interesting or exciting going on and it is quite a sleepy community. You need to get some more life into your forum to get members to keep returning. Happy members means a happy community. From a forum that has been open for 6 months I would expect an average of 30-40 posts per member. You are way below this and have some work to do, but don't give up!
(Scored 10/20)
Staff Moderation
You have 3 administrators and 2 Moderators, for the size of your forum this feels like a little too many for the size your forum is. In my opinion you only need 1 admin and 2 moderators. Your administrator master has only made 3 posts and hasn't been online for the last 4 days. This really doesn't look good, I don't see any reason for him to be on your staff team. YIPfolio seems to be doing a better job with 700 posts, which is a great amount compared to the total posts your forum has. Searchable is also good with a large amount of posts and good activity. Both your moderators seem to be active and doing their jobs, but one only has 130 posts, I would expect more from an active moderator. You also have a super moderator called Jake who seems to be doing a good job on the site, but I would like to see a higher post count from him too.
(Scored 8/20)
Spelling/Grammar & Professionalism
The one thing that makes me very happy is to see proper board descriptions as this is something that is lacking on many forums. They are well written, detailed and informative, very good! A small thing to point out is that some sentences you have chosen to use proper punctutation on, such as ending the sentence with full stop, where as some you haven't. Which you choose to do doesn't matter, but it looks better if it is the same on all descriptions.
The forum looks professional and well run with a good traffic flow which is always good. I am unable to find any major spelling mistakes or grammatical errors.
(Scored 17/20)
Total Score - 58/100
Final Remarks
A budding forum with a lot of potential. I found this forum difficult to review as there was nothing that sparked interest and made me want to continue reading. You have a lot left to work on, but things are moving in the right direction, good luck!
Strong Points
Professionalism, Board descriptions, posts per month.
Things to Improve
Too much going on in the theme, posts per member.
After reading your review, please click here to rate our service.
The Team Leader will deduct the cash from your account shortly.
