Your Forum Review
First Impressions & Appearance - (Out of 20)
Forum loaded very quickly and no slowness whatsoever. When I visited your forum, the first thing I noticed was the missing images on the right sidebar(Recent Forum Posts) - this isn't a good thing. According to your domain, you are a graphics forum, therefore whenever someone visits your forum the main attractions should be the logo, the colors of the design and the general beauty of the design. I like the design as well as the color combinations however, it does not suit your forum subject. You should definitely work on a more vibrant forum design and logo. Now, moving from your portal to your forums, something seemed missing. As I took a closer look, your forum's were missing descriptions! This made my initial impressions horrible as everywhere I looked, something seemed missing. But the forum design saved you here, as I liked all the round corners and gradients.
(Scored 15/20)
Site Layout - (Out of 20)
I like the way your categories are setup, goes from site announcements to your main focus of graphics to general discussion. However, mentioned earlier, most of your forum are missing descriptions, I really don't get why there aren't any descriptions to the forums, I mean it looks unnecessarily empty. I think you should consider broadening your graphics category "The Studio", for some reason everything seems squished, almost feels like if you are trying to compress the forum into a mini-forum. For example, you can keep the "Graphics Discussion" forum as is - for discussion regarding any graphics, however the sub forum "Showoff" can become a forum itself. I think you should lessen the number of general forums you have at the moment, as activity grows you can expand general forums as well but for now you should have a minimum number of general forums. I really liked the right sidebar with the new posts and new threads, making it easy for members to easily access new posts quickly.
(Scored 17/20)
Statistics and Activity - (Out of 20)
Considering you have been open for less than a month, your activity is decent. I realize gaining activity is one of the toughest thing when running a forum but your forum seems to be suffering quite a bit. You should start posting at least 3-4 posts/threads in
EACH forums. You have some forums that have
0 posts, not acceptable. Fill in those empty forums immediately, if you can't or need help, feel free to request posting services from us. Your general discussion sections have more posts than your graphics(main topic) sections, this is one of the things I really hate seeing on a forum, if you want members to respect your forums for being a graphic forum, then don't you think you should have the most activity on the graphics section? I mean of course you can have excess activity on the general forums but let that come after you have achieved activity in your graphics sections.
(Scored 14/20)
Staff Moderation - (Out of 20)
From what I can tell, you currently have two administrators and one moderator. I am assuming the other admin is your partner of some sort. However, what is the need of a moderator at this point? I can't say you are overstaffed nor can I say you do not have enough staff members. Somewhere in between. You're moderator (Alias) has 34 posts, seems like he is contributing to the forums but
not enough. If I were you, I'd ask him to increase his activity a lit bit but don't push him.
(Scored 17/20)
Spelling/Grammar & Professionalism - (Out of 20)
I'm not sure if I will be able to review this part completely, you're missing forum descriptions for the most part. However, I will say that reading some of your posts, your English & professionalism was next to perfect. You grammar however can be improved, I say that from reading your first news thread. When a guest first visits your forum, they mainly read forum descriptions to better understand the forum, you are seriously lacking in welcoming your guests.
(Scored 14/20)
Total Score - 77(Out of 100)
Final Remarks:
What was most liked about the website/forums: The forum design and the sidebar with the latest posts & threads.
What was disliked most about the website/forums: Lack of descriptions in your forums. The logo did not match the design and seemed off.
How could I get you (The Reviewer) to join my website? Tons more posts & activity. A more vibrant forum skin to that brings the forum alive.
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