Medium Forum Review
First Impressions
When I saw the name of your forum, I had no idea what it meant. I looked it up on google, I can’t find anything on it, so it doesn’t look like I’m the only one. When I look to join a forum, and I’m going through basic promotion, I most likely would not go into your thread because I have no idea what’s it’s about. I want to be able to quickly find what I’m looking for. What made you choose that name? When I opened it, I saw all this text telling me to join. I see large text asking me to sign up, below that more text asking me to sign up, and below that I see this line of text:
If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.
That line is there twice. I don’t see any reason to have it there twice, so that is something I would get rid of. Having so many demands to join is something that would put me off. But at least you don’t have a popup which is good. Now that I’m logged in, I see all that has disappeared and has been replaced with a welcome message. Your theme is a mixed dark/light theme which I think looks quite good. It’s easy on the eyes, and the colours work well together. Your logo is transparent and matches the colour of the theme which is good to see.
Appearance
Well, as I said above, your theme is looking good, and the logo works well with it. One thing that I notice when I scroll down to the bottom, is the text doesn’t fit in the space provided. Maybe you could move the last two lines over to the right? The next thing I notice is the ads are all different sizes. I think that would look much better if you stick to one size. There isn’t much more I can say here, as I have said, I like your theme and your logo also looks good. Below the logo it says ‘All About Technology’ which tells me what the forum is about , so I don’t have to scroll down. Which brings me to my next point, I have to scroll down to see the start of the forum. Maybe you could bring the shoutbox down to the bottom? Just so that there isn’t so much going on at the top. And the favicon, what is that? I don’t see how it represents your forum in any way. You should change it to something that represents your forum. Maybe an M? For MADMA. Again, good job selecting your theme & logo.
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Ratios
So you have been open for 13 months and in that time have gained 4402 posts in 4366 threads. Honestly this should be quite a bit higher for a forum of your age. This gives you about 11 posts per day, which is something that needs to be improved. And another thing I notice, almost the entire contents of your forum is made up of only threads, what is up with that? Maybe you could have some kind of posting contest? Clearly there is plenty to reply to. I’m not sure why no one is replying, it is definitely something that needs to be worked on. Try getting some friends to join and post and advertise everywhere. It takes time but it will pay off. Right now you have 2 staff members, both admins. Two is a good amount for you right now and I can’t ask you to change anything here. You also have a moderator, AndroidOS, which isn’t on your Forum Team page. He only has 4 posts which is not good at all. He needs to step it up or perhaps be demoted if he can’t do a good job. Three staff isn’t really necessary anyway. Now, back to the Forum Team page. You have 1700 posts which is almost half which is great to see. This shows you are dedicated. The other admin has 2600, which is great to see as it is over half, shows he is also dedicated. This adds up to 4300, which means less than 100 posts are from members. This needs to be improved. Try doing some exchanges or requesting packages. Maybe ask your friends to join. The next thing I notice is you have way too many sections. I’m not going to go into too much detail here, but you should try to get it down to 15-20 sections at the most. The long layouts like this don’t look good and just make things more confusing. Maybe 2 or 3 sections in each category you have would be a good idea. This would look much neater.
Posts
Well, there really isn’t much for me to review here, there aren’t many posts that you or your admin didn’t make. From what I can see, your posts as well as your co-admins posts seem to be of good length and quality. Everyone seems to have decent length from what I can tell, but again, there aren’t many posts other than the staff to review. The two of you have good spelling, grammar, and professionalism when posting.
Content
Your board descriptions have room for improvement. The first three are of decent length but don’t have a period at the end. Just a minor thing to be fixed. The rest of the sections don’t have descriptions at all. This is a problem, how would anyone know what to post where? You should work on getting descriptions at a minimum of 2 sentences for each section. At the top of the page, I see this: ‘you are officially logged in. be sure to visit the FAQ page if you have any questions or concerns.’ The y in your should be capitalized and the same with the b in Be. I can’t find the rules anywhere. Maybe I’m just not looking hard enough, but I don’t see them on the menu, in the announcements. You should make sure they are somewhere clearly visible for all members to see. It is important to have rules so members know how to behave to avoid any trouble. Your announcements are well written with good grammar and spelling which is good to see.
Final Remarks
You have a lot of threads for people to reply to, which is great. Now you just need to work on attracting members. Just advertise, advertise, advertise. Try exchanges and asking friends to join, or maybe a contest with a cash prize. The layout needs to be improved as there are too many sections. Just keep going, you are still able to succeed.
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