Hello, iRio.
What moved you to start a Lion King board?
I am fond of the movies, especially the first one. I wish you good luck with your community.
I'll give this a go because I find odd no one has given you any advice at all yet. I am not expert and I am mostly just giving you my opinion. If this is long is just because I can get carried away easily, but I am trying to help.
- Let's start with your portal.
This is only a subjective opinion but I think that for the time being you should make the forum index the landing page. Your community is very new, so the portal right now is too empty and discouraging. I only see one staff, I only see threads made by you. Once you get a lot more flavour then the portal might become more appealing but for now, I'd say make your forum index the first thing visitors see.
The first thing I notice is you have a very small font. I can barely read the news and the board descriptions. I don't mind much the typeface on itself (even though other people might actually find Times New Roman discouraging, as it is the default font some browsers use to display pages) the problem here is the combination of such style with the current size. It is very straining. I would recommend you to either make the font big or at the very least change the typeface to something rounder like the font used in the top Menu bar (Trebuchet). Verdana, Tahoma, Arial are commonly recommended choices.
My advice, whether you want to ditch the TNR font or not, is to keep it cohesively through all your community, from header to footer, index, thread viewing, etc. If you want the menu with one font and the rest in another you have to at least make sure they combine well. Right now they make the site feel disjointed.
I really liked the paws for the forum categories, I find them very appropriate. While the banner is simple it works with the nocturnal tone the forum is setting and the scene is recalling from it. Really nice.
I also like the hovering image. While most of the time strips might loop awkwardly, the horizontal repetition works fine for this one. The image itself is simple, evocative and doesn't get in the way. I can read just fine the row.
You have a few sections with zero posts. I understand you're practically the only active member at the time, actually posting around. Your first mission is to get rid of all the zeroes. Every zone without posts, make a thread. It is more a psychological thing. Empty sections stick out because they have a "no posts have been made" kind of text. When you make one post the index cells get populated with information on the thread name, the author and the zero disappears. This makes the section blend with the rest.
Of course just having one thread in each area still looks poor, but getting rid of the zeroes makes your forum look better for potential visitors. It shows that you care enough.
Now you got a forum about at least the potential Disney movies. You have all the excuse of the world to share youtube videos, sound remixes and other interesting material that can compel people to browse around your community. There are also some theories made about Scar actually not being a villain, Nala being Simba's half-brother, etc. Juice that into threads. Talk about underrated characters. Give material for people to talk.
I extend the observation on the combination of small size with a hard to read font to the thread posts themselves.
Which makes me wonder, is this intended? Do you like TNR kind of typeface in very small sizes?
Are you browsing from a big resolution screen or a simple one? Maybe our difference in resolutions is causing this.
In any case, I still would recommend you to increase your size a bit, if only to not let this become something that discourages new visitors from becoming members.
Well, this is what I could gather looking at your thread. I spent well over an hour, but I hope it has been worth it and you can find anything useful in my words to better your community. Best of luck.
🙂
