First off, thank you for being the first person to request a Meticulous Review
🙂 . This is the first Meticulous Review we've ever done. I greatly enjoyed doing this.
MistViper Gaming
Review by PoH
First Impressions
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My first impressions of MistViper Gaming were overwhelmingly positive. Everything is laid out in a clear way that tells me exactly what you're forum is about, while at the same time adding your own original style by adding an element of friendliness that will leave a positive impression on a first time viewer. The laid back atmosphere is obvious at first glance just by reading the line under your "Donations" tab that reads "Chuck Norris Approved." This shows a quality, laid back community that you've created at MistViper.
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Good
Design Quality
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I'm going to do something different. I've used all of your themes throughout the past two weeks. I will do a review on both, then give a final grade on them.
Your first theme is "MV Fluent Dark." This theme is the best theme you have. The red and black do a really good job of "flowing" with each other. The color scheme is very balanced and does a very good job of enticing a viewer to look at your theme, which in turn makes it easier to convince a viewer to look around your forum with just a first impression.
The only thing I see with this theme that I dislike is the icon guide at the bottom. It reads "icon Legend
Contains unread forum posts
Contains no unread forum posts"
However, all of your forum specific icons are customized. That bar is not needed because all of your forum specific icons are customized, not the default ones showed in the picture.
Your next theme is called "MV Light." This is a fair theme. It is not as good as your dark theme, but is still a decent quality theme. I see a few issues with it, unfortunately. First off, the staff and Member username colors are meant for a dark theme. They look very non dominant against your light theme.
The member and admin color especially look like they've already been drawn into the theme. I would recommend you either make the background color more dominant, or make the user names more dominant, by adding some extra bold to both your member and admin colors.
Something else I noticed is your ranks are above the avatars on all themes. This looks really awkward. Ideally, the rank should be below the avatar.
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Good
Site Statistics
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Right now, MistViper Gaming has 807 threads and 5,476 posts. Your post numbers are very good. However, your thread numbers are nearly what should be expected from a forum of your post and Member count. Your forum staff needs to be posting threads consistently so regular members will always have something to reply to. Your gaming sections especially need work in this area. Right now, your off topic forums are doubling your all of your gaming specific boards. Numbers like that tell me rather quickly that the majority of your activity is in "Chit-Chat" type threads. While those areas and threads are important, MistViper is a gaming forum. It goes without saying that most of your conversations should be in gaming sections, since you're a gaming forum.
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Good
Staff Professionalism
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This is a area you really excelled in. All of the questions I had about the site were answered quickly, professionally and with exactly the information I asked for. Keep this aspect of your forum up. It really helps show that you're a friendly community, as well as showing how much the staff team cares about the forum's members.
I also noticed your staff member's high post quality. I very rarely see one word posts by your staff. All of the posts are high quality and do a great job to contributing to the topic at hand.
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Good
Originality
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Gaming is probably one of the toughest genres to accomplish originality in. MistViper Gaming is a very nice and active forum. Unfortunately, though there aren't very many original ideas within it. Gaming forums are one of the most done forum genres out there. You're constantly competing with hundreds, if not thousands of other forums that are already out there. You have to ask yourself a question. "Why should someone join and become active on my forum?" There are plenty of other forums for people to be a member of already. The main thing you could use against other, larger gaming forums is Originality. As I said in my previous review, I think a gaming review section/blog would be very cool and unique. If you do not wish to follow that path, I believe a gaming arcade would be interesting. Then, members could play games on a gaming forum.
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Average
Site Structure
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Your site is structured very well. I can find everything with ease. I really like the bar across the top. The bar gives me access to everything I need on the forum, along with a few other fun things to make my MistViper Gaming experience as easy as possible. I really like that about MistViper. It really shows that you've gone the extra mile to make user experience as positive as possible.
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Good
Grammar & Spelling
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Honestly, I don't see many, if any grammatical or Spelling mistakes on MistViper. I see a few very minor comma splices in your announcements, but nothing that makes your announcements hard to read. Anything I would critique would be extremely nit picking and incredibly minor. Great job maintaining professionalism!
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Excellent
Community Interaction
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Your community was a very open and friendly community. I got a very nice and friendly PM from a regular member inviting me to a personal Team Speak server to talk with the members immediately after joining. I do not know if every member receives this PM. However, it was a very nice jester and really set a friendly first impression upon me as a new member. It made me feel very welcome, especially seeing that a regular member sent this, not a staff member.
Your forum can be a little slow on activity sometimes, mainly because of your forum's current size. I would encourage you to do little things like reply to your "Hello Goodbye" type thread whenever you're on MistViper. Doing something that might seem small can really make a big deal in the long run, because it shows commitment to posting from the staff members of the forum.
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Good
Content Value
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Quality Content is probably the toughest thing for a forum of your size to accomplish. You definitely have a good amount of quality content, in both general and gaming sections. You have some very good conversations and even debates in your gaming section. This can be improved right now. I would encourage you to post one quality gaming related thread per day. Doing this increases your conversation ability by giving your members more and more to reply to.
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Average
Final Remarks
MistViper is a very good gaming community. I reviewed this site about a month ago and can tell some of the improvement you've made since that time. If you work on improving your originality and adding some boldness to your light theme I see no reason why MistViper Gaming can't be successful. You've already made a very good start. Good luck with MistViper!
Your Score
