[QR] LIGHTS

[exposé]

Name of Forum: LIGHTS
Forum Link: http://lightsmb.com
Type of Review ( Quick Review / Forum Review ): Quick Review
Date Forum Opened: March 20, 2009
Demo Account for reviewer (Supplied by requester):
username: demo
password: demo123
Additional Notes: The demo account is not able to view any high post-count restricted forums or extra hidden forums which are privileged to active members.

 

[Raymond]

I'll take this one as well, Since I'm waiting on info for my other quick review 🙂.

 

[Raymond]

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Your Quick Review​

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Pros:

- I like how at the top of the forum you have an announcement section that displays different messages as looking at it seems that you give your users some basic knowledge knowing whats going on nice job using this feature to bring your community to it's most awareness of your forums.

- The logo looked really amazing, It grabbed my attention right away! Nice job also the overall design and layout (design layout) is great and very enjoyable and calm feeling.

- The portal is great only offers things which users and guest need. I noticed one item which is great to have but if you need more room this is one that could be removed for room Top 10 Referrers. As showing whos winning in referrers is important, However it doesn't really need to be displayed, Now I'm not saying I hate you doing this just giving a suggestion.

- I thought that the "Themes" part was very interesting at that. I mean I never saw a theme selector like that before, Very original and nice looking and gives the user a better way to see what they will be choosing to have as their theme.


Cons:

- Your forum seems a bit overwhelming with sections and forums. I'm sure you could bring in Child forums and try and merge sections and just overall make your forumhome not so cluttered.

- I didn't like the forum statistics and overall whos online being viewed at the top this should and always be displayed at the bottom as the top is for more important things such as notices and or announcements & sometimes advertisement.

- Now I don't know if you can fix but the Bio center doesn't really seem like a nice zone to find info about a staff member, Maybe by making it a bit more organized and re-coding some of it to make it a more unique and more info center. This would bring out for more people wanting to view your staff info zone.

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Final/General Thoughts:
Your overall design was amazing and really enjoyed viewing your forum.

What was most liked about the website/forums:
The logo and over layout(design)

What was disliked most about the website/forums:
There was WAY too many sections to view at once.

Final Score : Score - 7.2(Out of 10)


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[exposé]

- I like how at the top of the forum you have an announcement section that displays different messages as looking at it seems that you give your users some basic knowledge knowing whats going on nice job using this feature to bring your community to it's most awareness of your forums.

Yup, the announcements forum is used whenever there's something big going on. Or if there are going to be sudden changes.

The logo looked really amazing, It grabbed my attention right away! Nice job also the overall design and layout (design layout) is great and very enjoyable and calm feeling.

Thank you! The designers are very talented ^__^ And I've always enjoyed the overall layout of XMB forums (with a few header/footer tweaks).

The portal is great only offers things which users and guest need. I noticed one item which is great to have but if you need more room this is one that could be removed for room Top 10 Referrers. As showing whos winning in referrers is important, However it doesn't really need to be displayed, Now I'm not saying I hate you doing this just giving a suggestion.

I was half expecting you to mention something about the portal being stretched out. Unfortunately it's due to one of the announcement posts. I don't understand by what you mean when you say if I "need more room". There's going to be more tables added to the left side of the portal to balance out the right side. The reason the referral table is there is because we had a referral contest and it was important for members to view who was in the lead. 🙂

I thought that the "Themes" part was very interesting at that. I mean I never saw a theme selector like that before, Very original and nice looking and gives the user a better way to see what they will be choosing to have as their theme.

Really? I'm not a huge fan of the theme page. I'm working on recoding it so that there are 3 columns of thumbnails instead of one huge column. But thank you!

Your forum seems a bit overwhelming with sections and forums. I'm sure you could bring in Child forums and try and merge sections and just overall make your forumhome not so cluttered.

Ah yes, I can understand how some guests may feel overwhelmed at first. However, LIGHTS is just a large forum in of itself. It focuses on graphics, resources, and general chat. I personally feel that moving around various forums and making some of them into subforums would create more difficulty for members to navigate. A pro+ of the current organization is that members are directly exposed to all the major forums and activities/content on the forum without having to go through 5403769565 subforums just to find what they're looking for. But that's just my opinion.

I have however, posted a poll in the suggestion area for other members to give their opinions. =] If the majority would like the forums to be condensed then the staff will try our best to simplify them. Thanks for the suggestion!

I didn't like the forum statistics and overall whos online being viewed at the top this should and always be displayed at the bottom as the top is for more important things such as notices and or announcements & sometimes advertisement.

The board statistics are only displayed at the bottom of the index page, and in the middle section of the portal. The whoseonline is at the top of the page because that's the way XMB is set up. And members seem to enjoy being able to view the members looking at a particular page right away instead of scrolling down to the bottom. It's more convenient for them. I have considered moving it before, but I know a lot of my forum members would complain about the change. XD

Now I don't know if you can fix but the Bio center doesn't really seem like a nice zone to find info about a staff member, Maybe by making it a bit more organized and re-coding some of it to make it a more unique and more info center. This would bring out for more people wanting to view your staff info zone.

Thanks for bringing this up! The Bio Center is a project I just started working on. I thought I had disabled it but I guess not. The link has been removed so members can no longer view the page in disarray.


Thanks again for the review! I'll definitely take your points and the opinions of my members into consideration.