Napoleonic Times
Review by MrGravyCakes
Design Quality
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The first thing that grabs my attention is the banner, which is one image repeated several times. The banner doesn't fit the top of the forum, it is too small, so it repeats itself and looks ugly. It doesn't blend together, you can easily tell it is the same image repeated. This would be top priority ( no pun intended) on getting rid of, or making the image fit the full size of the banner.
Regarding your banner, it is good to see that you have made an effort with it. It has a nice font and I can see that some thought has gone into it. I think you could improve it by making it stand out from the banner a bit more, at the moment it seems to blend in a bit too much with the color scheme in your banner. I would also suggest making it link to the home page of your forum, as it does not link anywhere. You have a favicon, I love it when a new forum has a favicon! Well done.
The theme in general is very basic, although I can tell that you have used one to fit your genre. It would benefit from a bit of editing, for example you could change the default images for your topics, maybe add images such as guns or such like. This will greatly enhance the professionalism of your forum. I also think that the images that are inside each section, for example, the maps in the 'Europe' section are too big. They stretch the section and make it hard to navigate. If you made them smaller, it would solve this issue. This is a perfect example of what I am talking about:
http://napoleonictimes.proboards.com/bo ... ern-europe
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Average
Site Statistics
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You have 18 threads and 45 posts. This is not too bad for a forum of this age. It does seem like a lot of the posts have been made by staff so time to get members aboard!
The site is very new, as you stated in your request post. One of the best things you can do with a new forum is put content on it for people to reply to. You are starting to do this. You have made an effort to put content on your forum, well done for doing this. Make sure that all your categories have a few posts in, the worst thing to see is an empty category. On your chat box, the only person speaking has been one person, I presume that was you? This looks like the forum does not have anyone on it. I would get people to post on it with posting packages, it will help when people see multiple people chatting. You do not have many categories in your forum. I think this could be improved, maybe consider more aspects of the Napoleonic war that you could talk about?
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Average
Spelling & Professionalism
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I have looked around your forum and, for the most part, the spelling and grammar is good. I would, however, point out a few small errors. I have seen on several occasions that you have put the word 'and' after a comma. This is generally regarded as bad practice. In case you are wondering where this issue lies, one example is located in the first post in Bonheur Chateau. In the same post, you use commas a bit too much instead of using full stops. Try having a look through this post and separate it into more sentences, it's not bad to use full stops. I also had a look through more of your posts and there seems to be too many commas in some more of your posts. The link to another example is here:
http://napoleonictimes.proboards.com/th ... crollTo=45
Try cutting down on the use of commas and break it down into more sentences. It is advised to use either 'and' or a comma, there are very few occasions that you can use both, but it is advised that you choose between one or the other.
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Average
Final Remarks
This is a very unique forum with a lot of potential. The first thing you should do is change the banner so that it looks better and doesn't repeat itself. then I would work on adding more categories and making sure they all contain a few threads to start discussions.
Your Score
The link to the game that I was talking about:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/48705/
It is a mod, you have to buy the full game first, located here:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/48700/
