Gaminglect
Review by Teg
First Impressions
At first glance, I'm not impressed. The forum lacks in various areas from design quality to originality. A few areas of text are extremely hard to read as there is black text over a dark blue background. I'll cover more about that in more detail below. I chose to do this review because I'm a gamer. That being said, I'm very disappointed at what I see upon first taking a look.
As you read through this content, please remember that this is just the somewhat professional opinion of one individual. All advice given are merely suggestions or comments to help you improve your site.
Poor
Design Quality
The design of your forum is severely lacking. For starters, each of the individual forum banners (or logos) is of terrible quality. They are either pixelated or extremely blurry. Either way, they're not very appealing. I would tell you which ones I like specifically, but it seems as though your site has some severe loading issues going on right now as I'm writing this review.
As far as the colors go, I like the blues and grays. Though, I think the link colors of the board's names would be better as a light blue color as you're over using the gray. Also, the mark as read and forum team links are hard to read when you hover over them.
When you go to a board and scroll to the bottom, the shortcut "Go" bar for thread list ordering is extremely hard to read. The text that is displayed is shown in black on a dark blue background. The only way to see the text is to be on top of the screen or to select an option from the drop down menu.
The rest of the text on the forum is also hard to read. That statement is especially true for board names and descriptions on the main forum layout. The text is small and seems washed out. It's not very engaging or attractive by any means.
The new/old icons aren't impressive either. The only one that seems to look decent is the "Redirect" icon shown in the icon legend towards the bottom of the board.
Honestly, after reading the following part of a post an administrator made about the forum having a domain, I am very disappointed with the sites design. Here's a quote:
It is with great pleasure that I announce that Gaminglect has finally secured itself a domain name! Thanks to the help of our fellow forum members and staff, I was convinced to take the next big step by turning a throwaway Web site into a professional forum.
Note the word "professional." There is nothing professional about this forum's design or structure. It looks like someone took a very default theme and threw their logo and icons onto the page. The icons for the boards are very choppy around the edges, and it is noticeable over the dark background.
My suggestions for the design quality:
- Have someone create you a unique and excellent theme for your forum. Or, simply, do it yourself.
- If using dark colors, try to avoid using dark text on dark backgrounds. It makes the text extremely hard to read.
- Make sure your site emphasizes creativity. By this, I only mean to make your icons and graphics both unique and exclusive to the niche in which your forum is about.
- Find someone to create a logo for you that doesn't wash out with the background. A "professional" logo doesn't look pixelated or contain rough edges. It's not blurred, nor does it look washed out.
- Use some colors. Honestly, the colors you've chosen for links, text, and the like, are so boring and dull that I'm immediately turned off from your forum and not interested in joining based on the site's design alone.
Very Poor
Originality
The originality of this forum severely lacks as well. The unique thing that I've noticed about the forum is the rotating banner/logo on page load. That's neat. As far as the structure of the boards goes, almost all general gaming forums contain every board you've listed and nothing else. Your board's content isn't creative, unique, or original which is unprofessional for a site that's trying to be fruitful and professional. Those new/old icons are the most widely used video game controllers on the web.
You need to remove some boards and add boards that will make your forum stand out from other general gaming discussion forums. The theme isn't original at all and needs a lot of work.
Very Poor
Final Remarks
Honestly, your site needs some extensive work done to it. The design needs a lot of work and your forum needs to have more originality in order to make it stand out from other forums of its niche. Please do not take offense to anything in this review. I know it may seem like I'm being harsh, but I don't want to sugar coat anything as it won't help you or your forum. I wish you luck!
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