Large Forum Review
First Impressions
Well, keeping in mind that when I saw your forums software last night my opinion was “Oh god, I hate ZB” and even though I said I had no experience with Zetaboards it was because everyone I had been on just looked off and quite frankly, wrong to myself. Until I came upon yours in my ‘review mode’ today.
Now, when I was looking around earlier I saw a few horrible examples which put me in the state of mind that I would feel the same on your forum but after coming across your home page, I quite frankly feel quite in love. (As a note, I am referencing to your ‘Acid Haven’ theme) The colour scheme, although dark mixes in well with the splashes of green that decorate the outside and your eye-catching logo that encapsulates what your forum is about.
That said though, the theme I am greeted with when I am visiting your site for the first time without logging in, does not in my opinion encapsulate the ‘Mario’ theme. Mario is red, jumpy and all-in-all a hyperactive little sky who likes jumping on turtles and mushrooms. The cloudy sky is the setting of many a backdrop in the Mario franchise. Maybe you could incorporate that into the theme that your visitors first see?
Other than that though, nothing seems out of place. The boards are tidily placed below the chat box, the menu bar isn’t interfering in anyway and as a first time viewer, I can see that there is a lot of content for me to get stuck into. Either way, you’ve shown me that ZetaBoards can actually be pretty!
(Score: 13/15)
Appearance
I will be basing this section on the theme I was first presented with when I came to your forum. This theme is “Acid Haven”. I doubt me reviewing all nine of your themes will be useful for either of us!
So, Acid Haven. When I first laid eyes upon this theme as you may recall, I pretty much liked the whole shebang. The colours are easy on the eye, mix well together but the downside is that it just does not mix with the forums theme. As I said, I feel that you could benefit from a more cloud based, light blue theme to encapsulate the “retro-ness” of Mario as a whole. You could throw in an image of him bouncing around like the hyper guy he is.
Another thing with this theme is the board markers, whilst they are obviously related to the forums niche; my personal opinion is that they really do not mix in within the theme. The board icons are brilliant considering your forum but such colours; whilst they stand out just do not flow with this particular theme.
Your favicon shows what I believe is a picture of Mario which again, is a good point as it shows off your site. The logo, is very nice on this theme. The effects are brilliant as it the text and gradients that are upon it. However, on Mario’s foot I can see a hint of something that looks a bit out of place. (See image here -
http://gyazo.com/7366639c2ba0312e3aabab ... 1326394107)
As you can hopefully see, there is an area of white around Mario’s foot. This is only a minor error but the fact that I have seen it makes my mind think of that instead of the nice logo you have. Other than that though, everything else is fine and in order. Your forums theme looks very nice albeit, in my opinion unrelated to the forum as that theme would suit a more general gaming forum rather than a light-hearted Mario forum.
(Score: 19/20)
Statistics and Activity
I’m scared when I come to this part. You’ve been open for one year and 3 months and your stats are that of a well-established forum. Looking at your last review which was completed in November last year it would seem that you had around 75K posts yet merely a few months later, you’re sitting pretty on
102,458. Is your forum on steroids?
You’ve accumulated over 25,000 posts in 60 days (Since your last review). That’s an average of 12,500 in the past two months and overall you have managed an average of (Minus the 49,477 posts your staff have made) 3532 posts per month with you averaging 231 posts per member on your forum. Quite honestly, I couldn’t ask for more in this area.
Your staff are quite possibly the highest posting staff members I have seen in my time on forums and I wouldn’t tell you to change them for the world. You have the right amount of staff mixed with flawless staff/member interaction. Very well done! Top marks for this one!
(Score: 20/20)
Ratios
I’m going to be a bit picky here as when I see what I perceive to be problems with your boards I will say them. To start off though, you have 3 sections and 12 boards (Not counting sub-boards) which for a forum of your size is a very good ratio to have. I honestly thought you would have had more considering your statistics but it shows that the boards you do have are the ones that the members want.
Onto the nitty gritty. Now if there is one thing I just despise, it is Introduction boards being overfull with stuff. I appreciate you have a fair amount of members, but I have seen forums with more registered members have less posts than you in their introduction area. On the first page alone, there are 5 topics with multiple pages where things have gone off-topic. It is nice to see that your staff are actively locking off-topic threads but maybe you should have some sort of rule against coming into Introduction and having a chat if you catch my drift. That’s just my two cents there.
Looking at your “Nintendo” forum I can see 4 boards but I can’t help but feel that “Handheld” and “Consoles” could be merged into “Nintendo”. They are both about stuff Nintendo have made, so why not merge them? For me, it seems like a logical idea. Other than that, this section ticks my boxes. Your forums main topic is at the top of the section highlighting it as the most important which is a good thing to showcase to your members and visitors.
Onto the “Community” forum. I feel that some re-jigging is in order here as well. Off Topic says “Sit back and relax” and The Zone! Says “Bored?” Now, in my mind they are both pretty much the same thing (the descriptions) they mean the same thing to myself. I cannot see why those two could be merged into one to make one big General area because that’s all it is right? A General area.
Over all though, your board/member ratio is excellent, they are healthily populated although I do see a large portion of your forum sways towards the general sections more than the niche areas but isn’t that always the case?
(Score: 8/10)
Content
For this section, I gave your official stuff (Rules and such), your announcement topics and your board descriptions my all-seeing eye. Firstly, I would like to start with your Rule’s topic as that is the only ‘official’ document I can see that isn’t by ZB themselves. I have noticed that other than one line of your rules, they all look pretty good. The error I noticed was in the very first line of the document. “we have one rule we expect to be follow at all time” should instead be
we have one that (or which) we expect to be followed at all times. Only error I saw as I guess the “p0rn” word is to get around a filter of a type.
Now, onto your announcements. I am looking at announcements that are written by yourself as you requested the review; I have to say that you do a decent job within your announcements. You do a good job of keeping your members informed and up to date with relevant information. (Such as in the “Domain Transfer” topic. It helps people to understand your motives, which is always a good thing.
Board descriptions next. Looking over them it is nice to see that you have a degree of consistency in them via means of using periods at the end on all but one of them. I can understand why you used the exclamation mark there but my personal feeling would be to add a period there also but that is my personal opinion there, as I love consistency. I have a problem with the description on the General Gaming board. It states “Post games for”, for me seeing post games just doesn’t seem right. Maybe you could change it to “Talk about game for” instead, I feel it just flows better.
Overall though, your content is pretty good. A few changes here and there could be made to improve it slightly but over all, nothing major.
(Score: 18/20)
Navigation
Your site falls down a little here in my opinion. This may just be limitations by Zeta Board’s however but nonetheless. First off, when I go to a forum I will always look for the staff list so that if needed, I know whom to contact. When I logged on last night I went nuts when I saw user titles like “Bloom” and stuff, I was wondering which one is which. After a bit of digging, I found your “Staff List” post in your announcements, which finally told me which staff did what job. Now, you may be thinking, “Why didn’t Haze just click the Admin and Mod list?” I assure you I would’ve had I seen it at first. On my screen the text is so small it took me until I was testing out some of your themes to notice it down there in very small text. Personally, I didn’t like that.
Maybe I just did not notice it and it was an honest mistake but nowadays, I rarely find a staff list in the Announcements section. If possible, you could add the staff list to your “Rules” page at the top at least when I go to view the rules, I know who will enforce them. On a related note, your “Member Legends” do not link to the groups also, which is a common feature on most forums today. Perhaps you could link them? Whilst I cannot access the “Admin/Mod list” from every page I can see the legend on every page so I feel it would be helpful to link them up to the specified groups and/or place them in your Rules page. (Maybe you could add this? -
http://resources.zetaboards.com/topic/580439/1/)
Apart from that though, I do not see much else that is wrong with your navigational components. I can view your FAQ/Rules/Search from every page I visit on the site, as they are prominent in the header nav-bar.
(Score: 12/15)
Total Score
90/100
Final Remarks
I love your site, you have fantastic statistics and I can only see that getting ever better. A dedicated staff team who are committed to your site and with that, you have my idea of a perfect site. Active, friendly and brilliant staff. Some tweaks are needed but I have feeling if you do so, next time will see you in our Forum Showcase!
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