Your Forum Review
First Impressions & Appearance
When a potential user visits your forum, you want them to have the excellent first impressions. I had pretty good first impressions myself, but I have a few tips that will help bring my first impressions up to excellent. First of all, I absolutely love the logo. The logo is glossy and is simply striking. I think the mist around "GFX" is a little too noticeable, I think its opacity should be lowered a bit. Secondly, I like the favicon. It is a very nice icon and it matches the forum very well. I like how you tie the favicon and the banner on the footer together by having them use the same icon. That being said (third point), your footer banner is very appealing. Fourthly, I really love the gradient on the category background, the texture on the "Forum - Last Post" background, and I absolutely adore the sleek waves on the header. It really gives me the feeling of the forum being filled with artists. Seeing some of the work by your members, I think that feeling isn't misleading either. There are actually many designers with years and years of experience that could help just about anyone when it comes to designing. Fifthly, the forum icons look very nice and glossy. Seventhly, I like your ranks but they look a lot like a set of premade ranks I have seen before, just different icons I think. I think you should be a little more original with your ranks. Next, I love your theme. Your theme fits your forum's genre well. It is a very professional theme, and if you paid for the theme; you definitely got your money's worth. I think the board drop-down icons are a little too close to the edge, and that's my only complaint really. Lastly, I really love the approach you have went with on your forum. I'm not sure how to explain it; it's just unique, and different really. You seem to have a lot of webmaster experience, it shows with what you have done with your forum. Excellent job. Keep up the good work!
(Score: 17/20)
Site Layout
Your forum has a great layout. Everything is in its place, but a few things could be approached differently in the layout. Your forum has a total of fifteen boards in five categories. Considering your forum's current status, fifteen boards is a nice amount. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, unless they're asking for more boards. A couple boards are inactive though (example: member battles) and you should work on improving the activity in them or just replace them with boards that are more likely to have discussion generated regularly. That being said, the Battlegrounds category should probably be expanded into something like "Battles & Extras" or something similar. Just having battles in the category won't keep the category very active at all really. Next, I think you should make it so the two archive sub-boards in "Announcements" and "Board Problems & Feedback" don't show up on the main page under their main board. (or whatever you call it) Lastly, I feel you should improvise the "Showcase" category. It's nice to see that you have expanded showcasing instead of just having one unorganized showoff board. I think it's weird that you have it broken up with "Small Art," "Large Art," and "Work In Progress." the graphics in progress board is probably fine, but I think there is a better way to organize graphics than differentiating them between small or large. I think you should have the two boards organized by types of designs. As in, one of the boards could be for graphic design, the other could be for web design, etc. Just make sure that the boards can be kept active. Good luck!
(Scored 15/20)
Statistics and Activity
As of right now, your forum has accumulated 2,537 posts in 368 topics and 121 members. You said in your request that your forum opened on July 2nd, 2011, so I will go by that. That means your forum has been open for only around fifty days. Averaging that out, there are about fifty posts made on your forum daily. That is a pretty good average considering many factors involving your forum. This shows a lot of commitment by not only you and current/former staff members, but the regular active members of the community as well. You can tell that some people really like your forum; this could be simply because of the resources or the unique approach you seem to have went by while your forum has grown. With 121 members, you can tell that people are registering. That comes out to an average of around 20-25 posts per member. That is excellent. Not all members are active though. I think you should send out an email reminder or two, add more resources, and/or have an interesting design contest to help bring some of these members back to your forum. Overall, good work; good luck getting some of those inactive members back on your forum.
(Scored 17/20)
Staff Moderation
Your forum's staff team really seems to be moderating effectively. There are four members on the "Forum Team" page, but I am going to assume that the two premium members aren't staff members. If that's the case, your forum has a total of two staff members. One staff member is an administrator (you), and the other staff member is a moderator. Considering the current state of your forum, two staff members is a great amount of staff members. I see far too many forums that go crazy with staff and end up having six or more staff members. You seem to be doing a great job keeping the staff team small but still effective. That being said, as moderating rises, don't be afraid to add one or two more staff members. Just don't force it, let staff members sort of come naturally. Don't go looking for more staff members until it's truly necessary, let potential staff members come to your forum naturally and present themselves has contributors to the community who would be effective staff members. Overall, great work on this. Perfect score in this category.
(Scored 20/20)
Spelling/Grammar & Professionalism
The two staff members appear to be posting around professionally. This professional posting really is benefiting the forum. It makes your forum look like the real deal, which is one thing I know that keeps some people from joining design forums, because those unprofessional forums have been known to have rippers, etc. You can tell that this professional has also been brought upon the regular members of the forum. They actually take the time to use good spelling/grammar and make posts that contribute to the forum. Well done on professional. Now, let's get to the spelling and grammar mistakes I came across. First of all, take a look at the "Graphics Resources" board description: "Get GFX Resources here, Have you made any brushes, find some cool fonts, post them here.
Minimum 5 posts needed to view this section" so let's break this down. The current description is a run-on sentence. "Resources" doesn't need to have a capital letter. You should replace the first comma with a period, and the other two commas with question marks. "Find some cool fonts" is in present tense, so it needs to be in past tense like the other question in the description. That means "Find" needs to be "Found." Then the red sentence needs to have a period. The rest of the board descriptions look quite nice. To finish things off, I noticed a few things capitalized unnecessarily in your rules topic. Overall, pretty good job on this.
(Scored 17/20)
Total Score - 86/100
Final Remarks
Strong Points
Your forum's graphics, theme, and staff moderation.
Things to Improve
Your forum's spelling/grammar and layout.
After reading your review, please click here to rate our service.
The Team Leader will deduct the cash from your account shortly.
