Name of Site: MvPxC Site Genre:gaming Site URL:www.mvpxc.com Type of Review (Full/Quick/Questionnaire): Quick Opening Date: May 25th, 2013 Additional Notes: I understand the poor stats. So please do not mention it.
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First of all, I apologize for the late review! Life is a bit hectic these days. I hope the review I write will satisfy you in return. Let's go!
Strengths:
Regular and Well-Organized Articles
Upon visiting the forum again after a while, I saw quite a few changes. One of the greatest change -- and what seems to work well so far -- is the installment of the front page/blog system containing latest news and articles from the forum. I was happy to see this feature, and it definitely worked well with the genre/niche of the forum. Looking deeper into the articles, I found some game articles which are pretty good in terms of length as well as kind of content (news, opinions/reviews, and so on). This is one of the forum's strongest point at the moment, and I advise that you exploit this area to the maximum ability. Given the genre of the forum, a regular activity in posting articles is a good start. You did well in March, especially its later half. No need to force yourself to produce an article every day; a speed of once every two or three days is good enough if you can maintain such speed and quality of the content. One other suggestion is to include reviews in the blog. The current review structure can probably be enhanced with more opinions from the player, added with screenshots. That can also ignite interest and response from readers.
Strong Modern Theme
The second strongest point MvPxC has at the moment in my opinion is its theme. From the old days, I remember the awesome themes the forum always had, and it was a wonderful collection. The current one is no exception. The color combination, although it is a standard blue and white, is easy on the eyes. The arrangement of the theme elements is so far so good. If you are interested in trying something new, check out other color combinations for your next theme. I do not remember ever visiting the forum on a dark theme. That usually works well for game-related websites. Or other color combinations to make the forum more colorful. This relates to your current header and categories/forums images too. The banner is good, but can still be worked on more by at least making it bigger and add more images to the whole header to make it stand out more. More images can also be used for the forums to represent themselves, if you are diligent enough to craft or search for appropriate ones. With more colors to the theme, hopefully it will help to make the experience of browsing MvPxC more enjoyable.
Weaknesses:
General Layout and Professionalism
One element which I think can be improved on is the layout of the website. I will go straight to the point; the one thing that tickles me off is the view of chat box in the front page, above the blog. The reason is mainly because it takes away the view from the blog directly. The blog contains the highlighted content of the forum. It is quite a shame to have it overshadowed with leisure chats between the members. If it is possible with the coding and template edit, one possible solution is to move the chat box to the side bar so the blog will move up and immediately visible upon first click without having to scroll up or down. I want to also suggest to move up widgets which show your content to the top instead of statistical widgets. It is one of the ways to expose the forum's content more to visitors.
Moving on to the forum, I felt that the sections and forum descriptions can be worked on more. For sections, the forums under 'Role Playing Games' and 'Supplementary Games' are the least active compared to their brothers. I do not say you need to merge them right away; it is one possibility if it is not possible to breathe life in to them. For forum descriptions, there is inconsistency in which a some forums have descriptions while others do not. I also found some minor mistakes in the descriptions, such as missing space or wrong placement of capital letters. Minor details, but even minor ones make up the big impression.
Content Variation
While I will not touch on your activity level as requested, I figure I can try to give some ideas to try to help improve it. I can understand that it may be hard to come up with specific quality content in this crowded niche. Yet still, with games, there are various aspects to explore. This usually involves walkthroughs, tips, tricks, or trivia details of the game. Is it possible to organize or join in special events in online/multiplayer games? Or discussing certain battle tricks against the hardest bosses in the game? It may not be satisfactory suggestions, but can at least help for more brainstorming session and discussion between members to liven things up a bit.
Final Remarks:
MvPxC is one of the steady communities I knew from before. Activity and statistic is always a challenge once in a while, so all that I can say is do not give up yet and try to do everything you can to help the forum back to life again. Do not hesitate to ask for help from fellow members, or try to advertise more, as well as brainstorming some changes to give a new breathe to the forum. Have you ever tried asking the community members what can be done collectively at the forum and have some fun? They usually can come up with ideas you never thought before. Good luck!
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