Pre-Launch Review
Site Name: NCIS Fan Forum
Site Type: Fan Forum
Age: 12 days
Appearance
The banner of your forum is very nicely designed. I do wish that we could see more of the faces of the team though, as someone who is not familiar with the series would not be able to tell who they are. I also noticed that your banner repeats itself on the right side of the header. That may be due to an issue with your style, I am not sure, but should be looked into as it does not make the header look good. The menu is nice and clear and easy to read. I would suggest adding a couple pixels of padding to the icons on the Awards and Affiliates buttons to make them more uniform with the rest of the menu. The colors of your forum could use some work. The red on blue on green is not a good combination and clash against each other the way they are being used at the current time. An example of the clashing colors would be when viewing a topic. A green bard with the reply button, a red bar with the name of the topic, green mini-profile, red contact icons and the rest of the bars at the bottom are green. I would look into one of two things: a new theme with a better color combination or changing the colors of the current theme to make them flow better together. The clashing red/green combination continues at the "Informations" portion of the index page. On a lighter note, I like your on/off icons, they are well designed.
Layout
The overall layout of your boards is good. You have the announcements and suggestions at the top, which the recommended position for them. Going down, I would suggest moving the NCIS related boards above the general chat boards so that the main subject matter of your forum is the focus of discussions. That is the only suggestion that I have for your layout.
First Impressions and Interest
My first impression of your forum was one of interest, as I am a fan of NCIS myself. One thing that would make me think twice about joining is the colors of the forum, as they do not flow together well. If that was fixed I would be more inclined to join up and join in on the conversations.
Content
The content on your forum is really lacking, both in quality and quantity. Of the posts that I read, 90% of them were short posts that lacked any real discussion material. One of them was a spam post. You on have 38 posts so far that are public, however you have 50 posts recorded in your profile. I am assuming that the remaining 12 posts are in a staff board. If this is the case, I would suggest not including posts in hidden forums in the statistics for the sake of displaying true numbers to potential and current members. Doing this now, as opposed to later on down the road when you have a lot of posts hidden, will save you a lot of explaining to your members as to why the numbers dropped, if they notice.
Words from the Reviewer
I really like the concept of your forum. As a fan of NCIS, I would be inclined to join up and contribute to the community. If you fix what I mentioned above, I can see this forum take off fast. I wish you the best of luck with your forum. Maybe you will see me there sometime (soon!).
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