Pre-Launch Review
Site Name:Mahognay Folk
Site Type:Forum / Discussion board
Age:1 month max
Appearance
I like the wood effect background, and the font chosen for the banner gives it a folk kind of feel, blue IMO is the wrong choice for a main colour though, I was expecting grey tones, or greens and browns.
I would also have liked to see some customising of the forum and thread icons to give it that unique feel.
The choice of font for the banner is excellent, it could be a little larger, or maybe with a different background, a different colour to make it stand more would be good too.
Folk music is mainly lively and entertaining, you should try to bring that across in the forum, it all looks a bit dark for me.
There is no favicon for the site, ( the small image which appears in browser tabs), and you need to adjust your page URL's, when viewing your site I have "main forum" in the browser tab, which is not good for SEO.
I'm not sure where your forum is hosted, but it would be a good touch for the clock to show local time, I'm sure MyBB has a MOD for this.
Layout
Layout is good, the welcoming section in the traditional place at the top, followed by other categories.
The Category titles could be a bit more inspiring, instead of just stating the obvious, the same goes for the forum descriptions as well, the object of these is to invite people in.
You have one glaring spelling mistake "Lets Here IT" should read "Lets hear it".
I'm also wary of mid-sentence random capitalisation of words, grammar wise it's a no-no, aesthetically it looks OK only if every word is capitailsed, I personally would stick to the correct grammar.
You have two orphaned links on your Navbar, Regels ? takes you to a white page which suggests the HTML page is missing, and the Donate link gives a 404 (Page not found) error.
To be honest you should have discovered these things yourself, these are details which I would expect an admin to spot.
First Impressions and Interest
My first impression is that the board needs quite a bit of work, at the moment it looks like a generic theme, lacks customisation and peronalisation, you really need to put your own mark on it.
As a Beta version the general feel and tone of the board is good, a welcoming section, and friendly approach have given you the basics of a good site in a genre and niche which isn't exactly crammed full of decent forums.
A google search will show you what I mean, there are some awful ones out there, and they are top in google searches for "Folk music forums", so there is a lot of interest out there in folk music.
Content
As you stated there isn't a lot of content yet, I think you need to widen your horizons a little, whilst you may think that for example Mumford and sons are folk, traditionally you need to look at the past groups as well, Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, Lindisfarne etc, doing that would add a lot of content for you.
You could also work on profiles of groups and singers, make sure it's all your own work, list albums and singles etc.
A section on concerts would also go down well, along with fan sites, the list is really endless as to what you can add.
Words from the Reviewer
I realise that this is a very young forum, we are talking days here, not even a fortnight really, that means there is still a lot of work to be, building content, tweaking the style endeavouring to make this forum work.
Doing post exchanges could add some content, it will however be difficult to find posters who are in to the folk music scene, this means you are going to have to work very hard on you SEO and promotion.
Your rating is more of a reflection on how far you are down the road to launching rather than how good or bad the forum is, that is very much harder to work out, because it is so new, it's very much work in progress, and I will look forward to seeing the final polished result.
Star Rating
1.
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