Large Forum Review
First Impressions
My first impression of your forum is rather a standard one, sorry to say. Combination of red and white for forum scheme is a very common one, so it doesn't really bring a new, special feeling to the site. Try experimenting with more colors; red can probably go well with yellow or orange too. The header is pretty nice with the logo and quick log-in box. I think the small "b" inside the dot for "i" in "promotion" doesn't really work with the overall theme; if I didn't look more carefully I wouldn't have noticed the strange thing. Looking further, you have quite decent amount of categories and forums. You provide services for blogs there, unfortunately the activity rate of request is not very high. Perhaps you want to work on that; offering more unique services or try free service weeks for members and advertise a lot more. Overall the theme is simple and clean; while it is good, I don't think it would hurt to have more combination to raise people attention to want to know more about the site, more than just seconds scrolling around.
(Score: 9/15)
Appearance
My concern of Blog Promotion's color scheme has been mentioned above. In addition to the color scheme, the buttons and icons are very standard as well; pure only text and color. You might want to add slight icons to them to lighten things up. Since your site advertises blogs, and blogs are often associated with writing, perhaps you can add writing-related icons there. You can even use the bubble icon at the logo for icons around or like your favicon. Same goes with the forum icons; feels standard although they match your current theme well. Brainstorm, search for new ideas, and make your site unique.
At first I was feeling weird looking at your forum. Then I realized my problem was with the strange shadow effect only at the right side of the forum, but nothing different with the left side. Maybe it is only me, maybe not, but I think that is very strange, as if your forum has shadow or not is unclear. Consider this an input for a better strange since it's more towards perception than anything else.
The footer was very messed up. The details of "Powered by MyBB..." overlap the "Staff Affiliates" box. It was like that when I first started writing this review, and before I posted it I saw that it had been fixed. Great job. The box for staff affiliates itself is a great work, feels like it settled well with the forum. The color of "Contact Us", "Blog Promotion", and the rest of the line is too dark to be read properly. Change the color to a brighter red to make it more readable.
This part I'm not yet sure, but I suppose I will still share it with you. The mini profile for members to the left of the post feels too small for me. You ended up having a smaller avatar, only a few information, and the moods are resized to such a small size. You can consider using horizontal post layout to provide more space or add more width to the mini profile column. It feels like things are a bit too packed up there.
(Score: 12/20)
Statistics and Activity
Blog Promotion has 1,376 posts and 38 members registered. Roughly dividing it, that means you have around 36 posts for every members. Since the forum has just recently been opened officially to public, that is a good number. Taking out the posts from the staff team members listed at the "Forum Team" page, which is 836 posts and 400 posts of them are made by you, you have around 500 posts made by regular members. While that number might not be very good, I think it should be appreciated given that you are only recently started to show the site to the public. My other concern is that you rise high with 400 posts alone while the rest of your staff members have quite low post count; highest only around 100 posts. Improve more on this and let your regular members and staff members participate more in the discussions to raise the ratio even better.
(Score: 15/20)
Ratios
I think the number of forums you have at the moment is too much. That results in how empty several forums look like. Since you are new, it would be best to start small and concentrated; you can always expand yourself and create more sections later on if there are enough interests from members. For example, the number of forums for "Area 51" or the general discussion sections is as many as the forums for "Management" which is actually one of the most important category of your forum. You can merge the general discussion forums into one forum and place it under the members area, or merge the competition forums together and move it as a part of blog management or members area. Remember that general discussion doesn't always have to stand all by itself. I also think that the order of your categories wrong; I think since you want to advertise and help blogs to grow better, blog management should have gone higher than exchange sections or forum competitions. No one would really bother scrolling to the very bottom of your forum if they are not interested. You should put strongest points of your forum way up high where it will be easier to be noticed.
Staff wise, I think you have slightly too many staff members. You don't get many package services so perhaps one packager would do. If you say the other one is to backup each other, I can accept that. However having two moderators with the size of 38 members only sounds excessive. Perhaps they could be merged with the Competition Team or in another way to avoid having repetitive positions or confusing responsibilities. Starting small applies to staff groups too; expand only when you need it.
(Score: 5/10)
Content
Blog Promotion actually offers a good idea. Building blogs with the help of various services, management articles, and competitions. What I'm not sure of is whether you have one strong point you want to 'sell' from the site to support this idea. That is the one point you will need to work hard on. The services are quite the standard one, is it really what blogs need? You offer one unique service of YouTube promotion, is it really helpful? If you are sure of it then you will need to advertise it more to let people know. Same goes with the management and competition sections. In my eyes these are what your forum is about, and that it lacks 'life' compared to the non-blog-related sections. You have laid the basic idea, what you need is to explore the potentials of each section. This may correlate to my concern before about you having too many sections that it becomes rather confusing. Stay focus.
Grammar wise, I don't see problem with it. Descriptions and forum rules are well written. One small error I noticed in a forum description: "
All things computer and Internet related!". "Internet" should not be capitalized as it is not in the beginning of a sentence and does not show name or title. Otherwise, nice job.
(Score: 12/20)
Navigation
There is no problem with the navigation for me. Your site doesn't have a Term of Service thread, but it is not very urgent so I think it is okay. Forum rules might be better of as an announcement for the whole board in a place where members can access it fast anywhere anytime. Besides that, the navigation to parts of the forum is okay, simple and clean.
The 'jump' from one category to another one feels not too good, especially from the blog promotion services to exchange section, competitions, and blog management. I wrote in detail about this above so I will not touch this subject again.
(Score: 12/15)
Total Score
65/100
Final Remarks
Blog Promotion is a unique forum. I think this is the first time I saw a blog-advertising forum. That is a double-edged sword: you have lots of area to explore and work on to make your forum prosper, but it would take more time to develop it until it actually grows steady. Keep on updating the forum, stay fresh, offer various things, and ask members to participate and give feedback so you know what they want too. Good luck!
After reading your review, please click here to rate your review.
