Re: The Discussion Lobby (Paid To Post)
Your Forum Review
First Impressions & Appearance
You have a really nice theme. The dark header background looks just lovely with the lettering on the banner, and the favicon matches it too. That's my biased response to your theme. Here is my unbiased response: I really like your theme, but I think that you should have a lighter theme as an option (have two themes on your board). I know many people who wouldn't join a board because they don't like dark color schemes (such as your boards) and it hurts their eyes.
The forum icons look nice. I don't see too many forums that have a forum icon on
every forum, so seeing them on yours was refreshing.
I really like how users have the ability to get rid of the advertisements on your board. Even if I'm not fond of the advertisements you have (or more accurately, the placings of them), I can't complain because users have an ability to remove them if they upgrade.
I'm not fond of the navigation bars icons. I think that they make the header and forum in general look a little bit cluttered. I think it would look better if it was just in between every navigation button you had some sort of '●' or even just a bullet. Sometimes simple can look better. Also, since you have icons with every individual board, having icons also in the navigation menu can make the forum seem a bit too busy with images.
Maybe it's just me, but I spent some time looking for a topic called something along the lines of "rules". It wasn't until I clicked the "Help" button in the navigation bar that I realized that that was basically where the rules were. I think you should make a stickied topic directing users there, (titled "Rules & Forum GInformation") or rename that navigation button "Forum Information" or "Rules". Because if it's titled "Help" it makes me think that navigation button will have a form or be containing an email address or user I can PM if I have a problem or complaint. Maybe even if you just kept it called "Help" and just removed the forums rules from that page and gave the rules their own topic or own navigation button.
(Score: 15/20)
Site Layout
I love how you have those little tabs that users can use to navigate through the forum by topic (General, Buying/Trading, Groups, ect.). I think that's really neat. I've only seen that done about six or so times before. I think that the way that you have the forum laid out is really neat and organized. When I first visited the fora I could easily find my way through the forum, and it was easy to remember and figure out. I love how you have the forum organized. I have absolutely no suggestions or negative comments for this, nice job.
(Scored 20/20)
Statistics and Activity
A word to describe my first impression of your statistics and activity would be "decent". I don't see any forums that have less than four topics in them, and judging from your "users online in the past 24 hours" list, you have decent activity from your member base. Your post-member ratio is quite good as well. The average amount of posts per user at the time I view your fora is about thirty-eight posts per user. That's fairly good, especially for the amount of time that your fora has been opened. An achievable goal for your fora by the end of next month would be about forty-five posts per user.
However, I think that since you have good activity overall on your fora, you should make a point to get more posts in the "Review Centre" board. It currently has the lowest amount of activity on your board, and it's not good to have a huge jump in activity from board to board. Perhaps a small contest to get users to post more content in that board and other boards that are not overly-used would do the trick.
(Scored 17/20)
Staff Moderation
According to the "The Team" list, you currently have two founders, three administrators, three staff members, and two moderators. I think you have a bit too many administrators. What's really the need for
three? I'm assuming that the founders have administration control panel access (and disregard and accept my apologies if I'm incorrect), so why do you need to have five all together have access to that? That's just unnecessary. I would recommend that you move one of the administrators down to a moderator. Or get rid of the founders group, add the founders as labeled administrators, and make one-two administrators administrators. From experience, I can say that having too many administrators can complicate things very much. And leave your fora very vulnerable to hacking. (If you have five different ways to get into the administration control panel as opposed two or three, then it would be much less difficult to hack one of them) But then again, that's an opinion. Some people find it easier to work with more administrators than less, and I don't know how you like to run your fora, so if you find things easier and safer with that many administrators, then feel free to ignore this. But considering it may help you.
Other than that, I think you have a good amount of staff members on your fora for it's size.
(Scored 10/20)
Spelling/Grammar & Professionalism
Your description for the "Questions, Suggestions, & Feedback" forum - "This area is dedicated to our great thinkers who suggest amazing items that we should update and also for users who wish to post feedback on our site.", there's actually nothing wrong with it, but it just doesn't sit well with me. I think you should remove the word 'amazing' from it.
For this description (under the 'Gaming' forum) - "You a serious online or real life gamer? Well we want to know what games you play, system or reviews on games you've played. This area is all for gamers!", after the word 'play,' you should add the words 'or see'.
Other than those two things, I see no spelling or grammatical errors on the forum descriptions or on the board index. And your forum descriptions are really good. None are too lengthy and none are too short, and all are very straight to the point and helpful at telling me what the forum is about and what kind of topics are in it. Good job with that.
(Scored 18/20)
Total Score - 80/100
Final Remarks
Strong Points
The layout and the great forum descriptions.
Things to Improve
The navigation bar.
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