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Large Forum Review
First Impressions
For me the style is too dark, black and a really dark grey do not mix, the splashes of bright colour are trying to lift it, but for me it’s too much of a contrast, I’m confused by what looks like stock icons for the forum index, yet you have taken the trouble to use what I consider irrelevant secondary icons in the forum index. I have a similar problem with the banner, it’s a little too small for me, and lacks inspiration.
(Score: 10/15)
Appearance
As I’ve said the theme for me is too dark, the bright splashes of colour are too bright, it just doesn’t appeal to me, normally when I see a dark them like this you get a great header and banner to lift it, some webmasters in this genre also use a background to lift the mood a little.
The white and grey text styles are not good on the eye, maybe white and a creamier colour would work better.
It’s also a little different to see the Navbar at the top of the page, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, just different and probably not what people expect.
The plain theme becomes even more apparent when you move into the topic index pages, with no colour you see just a bland black page, something I consider very unappealing.
It may also be a good idea to use the facebook connect button at the top of the page. The genre is very competitive you need to be different, at the moment it’s just not different enough.
(Score: 11/20)
Statistics and Activity
I’m still confused by the post counts in some forums, I can now see that there are posts in all sections, but not in the quantities set out in the statistics, I appreciate that some may have been archived, if that is the case I cannot understand why they still show in the category counts.
Even with that you have a busy forum, the problem I see is that some topics and categories are a lot busier than others, some effort need to be put in to evening the post count out across the board, that will be difficult, but you need to concentrate on those area’s the members appear to like, and widen the topics in those area’s, that should increase the activity
(Score: 14/20)
Ratios
Most of you posts are coming from staff, they have well over 1k each, of the rest of the membership there are a relative few with 100 posts or more, the worrying point is the numbers who join and post less than 10 times, and the amount that have never posted, so there has to be some thing wrong, either there is nothing of interest to those members, or the meta description has given them the wrong idea in organic searches, I suspect it’s a combination of the two, you are there is no doubt attracting members, but they have the wrong idea what the forum is about, this needs addressing, either by changing the meta description, or by narrowing the field of topics.
(Score: 7/10)
Content
There certainly is lots of content, with the amount of active members you have it’s probably too much, you have topics which are duplicates, or because of their titles will divide the post count in a thread, and make it look less busy, eg :
In Literature you have :
Favourite Author & Favourite book, could you not merge these two.
In the same forum you have
My poems and my book of rhymes, ok these may have been made by different people, but they are practically the same topic.
Part of being an Admin is looking out for situations lie this, and thinking of ways to rectify it.
(Score: 15/20)
Navigation
The navigation is easy to use, and with a lack of sub-forums it’s impossible to get lost, and very easy to find things, links back to the index page are good, and the main navbar is on every page, which I do like.
(Score: 12/15)
Total Score
79/100
Final Remarks
I’m not sure that the few Icons you have on the index page help to lift the theme, once off there the bright Icons disappear, and you are left with a very dark and somewhat dreary page, to lift it across the whole forum is going to take the addition of a semi-transparent background that somehow fits what is a complicated genre.
I feel the forum title could be the root of your problems, trying to cover three genres in one forum was never going to be an easy task, the idea and concept are good, the execution is a little harder, Your problem may be that instead of appealing to people in three separate subjects, you may only be getting members interested in all three. To me it’s like combining a football forum with a rugby one, you are narrowing your audience instead of widening it.
Fine tuning is what is needed first and foremost, I would seriously look at adding a background, and seeing if that does anything to lift membership figures. Accompany that with better icons in the topic indexes and that will go a long way to improving things.
Reviewing the forum as member has lifted the score by around 20 points, re-reading my notes, convinces me that in my opinion it is the theme which is letting the site down
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