IMSpot
Full Review by AndroidOS
Scoring:
First Impressions & Appearance – (12 out of 20)
The first thing I noticed when I was on your forum's index page is the log in/register bar at the top of the page. This is a good thing, as it immediately encourages me to sign up, or log in and start posting if I was already a member. However, to me, the rest of your theme is out-of-date. The colour scheme to me is very bland, with the simple blue and whites not really standing out. A very simple thing you could do to improve this is have a darker background, like Forum Promotion does.This would make your content stand out from the rest of the page, drawing me into that bit; currently I feel as though my eyes are left to wander off the actual content.
However, I think if you have the time and money to spend, a whole new custom theme may be the way to go. As I have said previously, the current one looks outdated and, I have to say, rather boring. This is not just your forum though - I do have to say I have not found many vBulletin themes that are up to date with the current popular design techniques. I have to say however, your forum does have a certain flow to it. All images, including your logo, favicon and section icons, are all linked, and this is something some forums do not have. This is something I would not change, as it makes the site have uniformity.
Site Layout – (10 out of 20)
The first thing that strikes me about your site layout is that you have a lot of sub-forums, some of which have a very little amount of posts. Take your Content Management forum for example. In it you have 4 sub-forums, one of which has yet another sub-forum inside of it, and all of these really have a small amount of posts inside. This is something I feel you need to work on. When you have a lot of sub-forums it confuses users (where should I post my topic?), and even puts some of them off from posting at all. The same sort of logic applies to main forums as well. Try not to have too many of them on a small board as it will overwhelm some people. To try and decide which sections to remove, look at the amount of posts/topics it has and when the last reply was. One last thing I would recommend is removing the Area 51 section from view for people who can't access it - this confused me at first as I hadn't read the forum description.
Statistics and Activity – (12 out of 20)
You have around 10,00 posts by around 300 members, which for a forum of your age is pretty good going. I honestly think you don't need the amount of moderators you have, but that is not a massive problem as regular users are posting as well. I have noticed however that the only staff member who is in the "Top Posters" list is the Administrator, Enigma. This is something you should bring up with your staff as they need to be seen posting around the forums a lot, specifically the Moderators. You also seem to have an alright topics
😛osts ration, however I have noticed that some topics have received no replies. This is something that is easily fixed however, as there are not many topics like this.
Your off-topic section also has a lot more posts than most of the others. Whilst there is not a lot you can do about this, you should, as the owner, post more in the other sections yourself to try and promote activity. Perhaps you could also implement a system where your post count does not go up when posting in off topic sections, to try and encourage members to post more in the others, though this is not something I would keep permanently.
Content – (11 out of 20)
As I said earlier, for a forum of your age, there is quite a bit of content. However, I do not think a lot of this is quality content. When browsing through many of your topics the opening post is, on average, 1-2 sentences long that don't really provide much in the way of discussion opportunities. This is something that is reflected in the replies, with many being of a low quality, and some not using the correct grammar or spelling, which personally is something that really annoys me.
This is your most important issue that needs fixing, as without quality content people are not going to sign up. The first and most obvious advice I would give to you regarding this is for you and your other staff members to post good topics which allow for a lot of discussion. Be careful not to go overboard when doing this however, as you don't want it to seem as though you are the only ones posting. Perhaps also change your currency system to pay per character instead of for just posting a topic. This would encourage users to post longer posts rather than short ones just to increase their amount of currency.
Spelling/Grammar & Professionalism – (14 out of 20)
The official posts (and the rest made by staff members) all seem to be professional, and I can't find any grammar or spelling mistakes that are obvious. All forum descriptions also seem to lack any errors that need fixing. I honestly also think that, apart from the short sentences used, the overall spelling and grammar used by your regular users is also great. Obviously this is not something you would be able to fix if it were to be a problem, but it just goes to show that you have managed to attract relatively professional users to your forums.
Total Score - (59 out of 100)
Final Remarks:
Your forum is one I would definitely consider joining if you manager to bump up the quality of posts. Keep on working hard and I'm sure you will do this soon! After that, maybe tackle the issue of the theme (this can honestly be done with a few small edits, a new theme isn't totally necessary), and I believe this score would improve by a lot.
Strengths:
- - Next to no spelling mistakes
- You seem to have a good userbase
Weaknesses:
- - Lack of quality content
- The theme needs improving a bit
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