Large Forum Review
First Impressions
I like the beige colour scheme that you are using on your forum; it is very neutral and easy on the eyes but still stands out. When I visit your forum my eyes are immediately drawn to the menu bar as it is quite a bit darker than the rest of the forum, while I can’t see any major issues with this I feel that making it lighter would help draw attention to the more important aspects of the forum, such as the Welcome banner. One thing I notice immediately is the menu buttons are images and not text, this is in many ways a difficult thing to deal with, especially for people using screen readers. This also leaves you with buttons that are difficult to edit, especially as I would like to suggest making the text a little smaller as it is slightly over-powering size wise.
I don’t notice the logo straight away, but I do notice the coffee cup, which is a great image that you can use to define your and market your forum with. However, I do notice that it is the candy image you are using to market your forum and it is an image that appears many times on your board, working this image into your logo would do a great deal of good for your forum. The reason for this being association for new members that are arriving from other sites where you have advertised your forum. There is also a huge gap between the main menu and the next large element. This looks very odd and you lose a lot of valuable space that can be used to show off more of your actual board, as without scrolling all I see is the very first board. This doesn’t tell me much about your forum. The first section of screen seen by a visitor is what creates the first impression and makes the visitor decide if they wish to continue browsing your forum or not.
As a new visitor to your forum I want to see three things, an inviting theme, some information that gives me a hint of what the forum is about and an option to register. The name of your forum doesn’t tell me what your forum is about; neither does the slogan on the logo. The sorts of feelings that come to mind from the question “Where’s your sweet escape” start to make me think .xxx domain. As for the profile and inviting area at the top, there is far too much going on. I really don’t want to be greeted by the forum stats; this is something I want to look at only if I feel they are important. The overall feeling I get when first visiting your site is that you are trying to throw everything at me all at once. I feel overwhelmed and don’t particularly want to continue reading in fear of an information overload.
(Score: 9/15)
Appearance
Appearance wise I feel your forum needs a lot of work. The theme isn’t very appealing even if the colour scheme is very good. I find it very hard to word my feelings for your theme without sounding too negative. There are themes that work and there are themes that don’t, your theme is one of those that really doesn’t work. Even if you have a great colour scheme which you should definitely stick with, you have no flow to your theme. The first thing I feel you should look into is replacing the current background with a single coloured one, or at least one that isn’t as strong and outright. The next thing that is difficult for the viewing of the forum is the wide forum. I have nothing against fluid forums, but I do feel that yours is a little too wide. Perhaps setting a max-width of 1048px would help. The reason this can be an issue is because it feels like the forum is running away from you, like water runs through your fingers. A forum with a cleaner designed structure, with this I mean borders that control the look and give the eye something to focus on works much better. You need to look into using borders to frame and control the eye more.
The gradients used on the section borders flow the wrong way compared to the rest of the theme and also look odd as there are no other gradients being used anywhere else. The dark green hover clashes badly with the rest of the forum and I have no idea what the forum markers are meant to represent, again .xxx springs to mind. The bright username colours mixed with the bland theme cause a lot of uneasiness for the eye, which really isn’t good.
Overall I feel that you need to look into getting yourself a new theme. A beige colour scheme is good, use the red and whites of the candy that represents your forum as colour breakers and a silver lining throughout your design. Board markers could quite easily be these candies too, use things that re-appear several times to create flow and recognition. The tabbed system at the bottom needs to go, as does the menu need a big change. I suggest a completely new theme that is modern and minimalistic with a brand new logo that represents your forum and reflects the style of your theme.
(Score: 7/20)
Statistics and Activity
Your forum opened on May 26th 2008, meaning it has been open for for around 3 years 8 months. This is around 1320 days. In that time your forum has gained 36555 posts, giving you an average of 27 posts per day, which for a forum of this age isn’t great. With an average of 500 posts per member I can’t see much to complain about however, these are pretty good stats. I would however like to see an increase in daily activity, a task which falls mainly to your staff. It isn’t difficult for them to make 10 posts per day and if they do, then members will follow.
Activity wise you seem to have a lot of active members, whilst I have been viewing your forum there have always been members online but I haven’t seen many new posts appear. It is important to work on not having a forum full of lurkers, but a forum full of people that actually post too. This is something that your staff will have to work on, engaging the whole community in discussions. The removal of the shoutbox I believe is something that will really help with this issue.
(Score: 14/20)
Ratios
The General discussion off-topic board, which is what I am choosing to call it, has an overwhelming amount of posts in it compared to all of the other boards. In my experience this is never a good thing as it shows that members aren’t interested in the actual niche of the forum. As this is a general discussion forum which has boards for nearly everything this is extra worrying and starts to make me wonder if a lot of posts are being made in the wrong sections.
I do feel that you have a good amount of boards that are well split up into different sections, even if I feel that the SpeakEasy board could be split into more boards. The top section which is begging for votes I find really off-putting and I suggest you remove it straight away. It doesn’t look very good and ruins the professionalism of the forum. Staff wise you currently have 7 members of staff, I can’t quite understand how the staff rank system works, but I feel that this is an ok amount of staff for your forum posts wise, but activity wise I believe you only need 3 or 4 active members of staff. You are not receiving very many posts per day and with the amount of staff you have I would expect a lot lot more posts being made. I am not impressed with the staff you have right now.
(Score: 5/10)
Content
Content wise I am pleasantly surprised, most of the posts on the forum are at least 2 sentences long and are well-written and all on topic. The spelling and grammar is very good but not too formal for this niche. You have a good balance here with some very good members, a community you should work hard on keeping. The rules are well-written but are a bit odd content wise. The absolute basics are there but there is nothing that tells me what I am actually allowed and not allowed to post. There are no rules that cover private messaging, nor are there any rules that tell me how member interaction is to be conducted. You are clear with the disciplinary system which is good, but there is nothing that tells me what staff member does what and what levels of staff there are as the staff page doesn’t tell me this.
I was unable to locate any kind of ToS or Privacy Policy on the site which is very disappointing and can cause legal issues. There is also no copyright written to your site or the creator of the theme.
(Score: 18/20)
Navigation
I found it very difficult to navigate your forum, especially when looking for the announcements and information which I eventually found in a sub-board which felt very odd. It took me over 5 minutes to locate the rules as they are not linked to anywhere on the board, even in the announcement that told me there had been a rule update. The tabbed navigation on the bottom makes things hard to navigate and takes much longer time to locate what I am actually looking for. Overall there is too much going on on your forum and small text sizes everywhere make it hard for me to read and locate what I am looking for. The boards are cramped together, padding never hurt anyone and I feel very claustrophobic when viewing your site. Think about ease of access for visitors that are not used to your site and especially regard screen readers.
(Score: 10/15)
Total Score
63/100
Final Remarks
A forum that has a lot of ups and downs. You have a lot of work ahead of you, but at the same time you have many things to be proud of. I believe that with a new theme, more active staff and creating a greater understanding of what users are looking for that you will have a very successful forum. You need to put more effort into profiling your forum and generating discussion in the correct places, with a unique touch that make users choose your forum. A more modern and professional theme will give you a great boost in the right direction. Good luck!
After reading your review, please click here to rate your review.
