Name of Site:Mincie Site Genre: Webmaster Site URL:http://mincie.net/index.php?referral/&c=S9_WR3VX Type of Review (Full/Quick/Questionnaire): Quick Opening Date: March 14, 2014 Additional Notes:
We are in the process of a re-launch, I am requesting the reviewer to be brutally honest, true constructive criticism is being requested here. 😉
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Hey Sharon sorry, my internet went out over the weekend and I couldn't get online. I have it fixed now and you will have your review very soon. So sorry for the delay.
Theme/Layout
I really like the simple theme of the forum, but at the same time, I feel like there's too much white. (Although I think that is just personal preference) I personally don't like the scrolling menu bar at the top, but it's not necessarily a bad thing. When I scroll down, I don't want that to come with me. One thing I think you should do is make it more obvious what your forum is about at first glance. For example, here at FP we have "Website & Forum Promotion at it's best!" so people coming here know that it's used for promotion. (If they didn't already from the name).
With Mincie, the name doesn't say anything to me to help me know what the forum is about, and at first glace, it's kind of hard to tell. Obviously as soon as you start looking a the categories, you can figure it out, I just think it'd be better if you can make it a little more obvious near the top of the page.
One more thing I don't like is the forum descriptions not appearing unless you hover your mouse over the forum title. At first, I didn't think you even had any descriptions and was a little confused as to why.
Overall, I think your theme is great and not much needs to be changed.
Staff
I think 2 staff is a great place to start for now. Once you are active, then you can consider adding another staff member, but for now, you need to leave it just you two. It seems like you two are the most active members on the forum which is both a good and a bad thing. It's good because you guys are trying to stir up some activity, but it's bad because nobody else seems to be posting anywhere near as much as you two are. It appears that you two log in and post every single day which is good as it shows you are dedicated to the forum and getting it active. For the most part, you two just need to keep doing exactly what you're doing, but one thing you guys could do is to look at forums that haven't had any posts for a long time and either delete them, merge them into other forums, (Maybe make them a sub-forum) or start posting in them. If you start posting in them first, other members will be more inclined to do the same. I went through and picked out your forums with the longest time since the last post and they are 'Other Search Engines', 'Reviews', & 'Staff Applications'. I'll talk about this more below.
Weaknesses:
Activity
The activity is pretty terrible right now, but as you are going through a re-launch, I'm sure this will fix itself soon. I kind of covered this above where I talked about the staff with what you can do to improve your activity, but as long as you keep posting and advertising, the activity will pick up soon. Maybe run some sort of "re-launch contest" to see if you can jump start the activity some what.
Amount of Forums
Your forum has way too many forums in my opinion. Your forum looks big and a little overwhelming for how little activity there currently is and people probably feel lost. We'll start at the top;
The 'Search Engines' category is perfect and I can't think of anyway to get rid of some and still make sense.
The 'Business & Marketing' category currently has 9 forums in it. You may be able to merge the 'General Business' & 'General Marketing' forums together and maybe have sub-forums. Most of these are okay, but I feel like if you merge those 2 together as well as merge the 'PPC' forum into something else, that'd be good. The 'PPC' forum just doesn't have enough activity to warrant it being it's own forum currently.
The 'Web Design & Development' category currently has 8 forums in it. The first thing that jumps out to me here, is why do you have both 'Content Management' & 'Forum Management' as their own forums? Merge those 2 and make them sub-forums under a different category. Maybe call it 'Website Management'. I feel like those will both fit under that. I don't really know how to do it, but I feel like you could merge the 'HTML & Website Design', 'Graphics & Multimedia' & 'Programming' all into one forum. I also don't think the 'Databases' forum needs to be there and I feel like it can be merged into something as it hardly has any activity, I'm just not quite sure what I would do with it.
The 'Services' category is fine with just 3 forums in it, however you may be able to merge the 'Freebies' & 'Buy & Sell' forums and just have sub-forums.
The 'Mincie' category currently has 6 categories in it. 'Announcements', 'Introductions', & 'Comments & Suggestions' are all fine. I don't really like the 'General Chat' forum being there, but there's not a better place to put it, so I guess that'll do. I feel like you could make both the 'Contests' & 'Staff Applications' forums sub-forums underneath 'Announcements' as these 2 forums probably will not have too much activity in them.
Final Remarks:
For the most part, this forum looks pretty. There's just a few minor things which are easy fixes and then you'll be in great shape. This forum has a lot of potential. Just fix the few things I have said above, or don't since this is my opinion and not fact, and you should be good to go.
One thing I loved seeing is that everything is spelled perfectly. 🙂
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