Site URL: https://opencarnage.net/
Date Opened: February 14th 2012
Date Opened: February 14th 2012
Open Carnage
- Thread starter Tucker933
- Start date
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Official Review of Open Carnage
https://www.opencarnage.net
by Cryptonic
https://www.opencarnage.net
by Cryptonic
Upon entering your site for the first time, I noticed that it was an extremely dark theme. At first I was not too sure what type of site it was other than a forum. After scrolling down, I noticed that the site is a gaming forum with 85,XXX posts. After looking at the site for the first time, I was really surprised at the quality of posts as well as the measure.
Something that I did not necessarily like was the style of the theme. Typically with darker themes, you would want to have some color to make it stand out. The theme seems really bland, but I will get into this in the design quality section. First impressions mean the world to a majority of the people. So my first impressions were a little shot from the first view that I seen. This is a screen shot of the first thing I seen when I entered the site.
I honestly think that the theme has a lot to do with my skewed first impressions. As a guest, I do not see any navigational links to various parts of the web site. Overall, my first impressions of the site are average for a gaming forum.
Average
As mentioned above, I do not like how dark the theme is. The theme would be great late at night, but I do not see a practical use to it during the day. The blend of the text is easy on the eyes, however very little color. The only customization that you offer with the theme is different dark-colored backgrounds. The theme entirely seems extremely bland or generic. With a forum of that size, I would tend to think that a customized extraordinary theme could be purchased.
The logo image is straight text with no imagery at all. Again, with a forum that size, it may be worth investing money into a paid logo. Pictures and images make a lot of difference when people first look at the site. There is absolutely no custom new post or old post images. The navigation is efficient because there is absolutely no navigation at all except for the index. The grammar of the forum board descriptions is fair with some minor mistakes here and there.
I ran your site through CSS and HTML validation services. When running your site through the HTML validation, 40 errors arose out of the validation check. You can find more on those errors here. During the CSS validation, there were a total of 109 errors. More information on the 109 errors can be found here.
What I would recommend is to carry out a darker mixed with lighter theme, especially for gamers. I found a theme along the lines of what I am talking about. It will still need some editing as the forum area is a little dark still. You want that perfect balance of colors. You can use the link by clicking theme or looking at the picture below.
Overall, the design quality of the site is below industry standards if you would call it.
Poor
I really like the structure of your site. As mentioned in my first impressions review, there are no navigational bars as a guest. You also do not have 1,000,000 different boards like most forums do. This makes it a lot more simple for an end-user. Less navigation and confusion means more user interaction and usability.In the descriptions of the various boards, the forums appears to be very laid back and “fun”. If I were to structure a gaming forum such as this website, it would be very close to what you are doing now.
One thing I would focus on would be a contact page or staff page with contact information. Sometimes, people can have hard times registering and would have to have an alternate method of communication. The structure of your ticket system is brilliant as its marketing for your forum at half the cost of marketing. It not only is marketing your forum, but also increasing the posts and activity.The structure, in my opinion, is above average compared to normal forums.
Good
Originality is what may hurt you on this review. As you know, there are tons of gaming forums out there on the net. I have seen these forums for about 15 years now and yours specifically is a standard gaming forum. Looking through the boards, there is nothing out of the ordinary. What I mean by this is that there is nothing I have not seen before.
The theme appears to be a free theme that you downloaded and applied to the site itself. I mentioned before that with a forum this active, it would be beneficial to buy a paid theme or design a theme yourself. I do not see any forum rules easily accessible. Your user groups are not creative at all. It appears that you are using standard user group titles.
I ran your site through a plagiarism checker and several of you or your users reviews of games came back to be plagiarized from other locations on the web. Overall, I think the site is lacking a tremendous amount of originality from the administrators part.
Very Poor
The activity on your site is spot on for a forum. Your forum has 5,xxx topics with 85,xxx posts. For a forum, that is great. This means you made it past the entry phase and knowing that your forum will succeed. Something else I also noticed was your donations. Your community is strong and they also believe in the forum. If I read correctly, there was a total is 5,xxx in donations.
Your community is highly active and clearly loves the forum. I did not see certain posters do all the posting. The posting seemed to be balanced between most of the members. Although I can not see the amount of users on the forum, I can get an estimate. The ratio of users to posts appears to be adequate.
I even noticed the activity of the forums discord server. At any time when I was completing this review, I could go to the site and always see 15-25 users on the discord server. One really good thing I noticed was that the posts are frequent on a day-to-day basis. Overall, the activity on your site is excellent.
Excellent
The thing I liked the best: The forum Activity.
The thing I liked the least: The overall style of the theme.
Overall Mark:
Overall, with the exception of the theme and the originality, the forum is solid. I do not see this forum dying any time soon unless the forum provides any lack of leadership and incentive. With some minor changes such as the theme and minor stuff here and there, this site could be even better than it already is. Keep up the good work as I enjoyed reviewing your site!
Overall, with the exception of the theme and the originality, the forum is solid. I do not see this forum dying any time soon unless the forum provides any lack of leadership and incentive. With some minor changes such as the theme and minor stuff here and there, this site could be even better than it already is. Keep up the good work as I enjoyed reviewing your site!
If you're going to pick between light or dark, dark works ideally in all lighting environments (provided it's designed with good contrast between the elements). It could be argued that having two options would be ideal, however users in our market tend to avoid light themes in general, so it's not worth the development time that's spent elsewhere.
A common mistake forums often make (particularly around here) is to clutter their pages with shortcuts for navigation, amazingly making it much harder to find relevant functions. At large scales, you would want navigation at the top for the main content niches, however we are nowhere near a scale where finding relevant content on the index is troublesome (which is always just one click away). If you want something easy for a new user to grasp, you don't add a bunch of redundant buttons.
Very near all of the errors reported there are complaining of code unique to IPB (our forum software), and thus aren't errors. The rest listed there in regards to "alt" attributes, which are (as I'm sure you know) only necessary if you want a search engine to classify the content.
Content is the priority, so it would be detrimental to put excessive branding in its way (particularly that monstrosity). You don't sell anyone on a forum; you sell them on the content or its capacity for support. Function should be far ahead of form. Check out any significant social site for an example of that.
Placing form that far ahead of function is a disaster, and you'll never get anywhere.
The contact button is at the bottom of any page, and doesn't require an account to use.
We're the leader in original content for Halo 1 Modding, which is where a significant chunk of our activity is. Our reviews are also all original, which is uncommon on forums.
The theme is premium, and heavily modified beyond that to meet our needs.
There's not much of a reason for guests to view our rules, and as a result are only shown for registered users.
Opinions in our reviews are entirely original content, which is a requirement listed in the section's guidelines and enforced on every new review. Still, I just ran the first page of reviews we have through http://smallseotools.com/plagiarism-checker/ and no plagiarism was detected, other than of course descriptions by the game developer, which is quite encouraged for accurate context.
All in all, while I did debate some opinions (which is fair for you to have), there was also quite a lot of information in your review that contradicted the reality. I get that this was rushed due to the change in reviewers, but that seems to have really sacrificed quality in that regard.
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With the exception of the contact link, that was overlooked due to the size and location, the review was thoroughly thought out. I do understand how you feel. The first impressions and the theme review, are based on a first time impression and review of the forum from a guests prospective. As I am highly into gaming and gaming forums, I seen no benefit to joining from a first time impression. I meant in no way to offend you. This was a review on the criteria that was chosen. If you have any issues with the review, please bring it up to my team leader @Kaynil
I'm trying to help you as you're trying to help me; it's not personal.
The inaccuracies were mostly in regards to the original content, which even surpasses even what's available on FP. I understand that a first-time viewer would have some trouble quantifying that on any site, but you made it one of your biggest points to say we're lacking in that department.
You also say it was hard for you to figure out what the subject of the forum was, even though (even in your screenshot) the description is the most apparent content at the top of any page.
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