Your Forum Review
First Impressions & Appearance
It is nice to see that you aren't using the normal blue that is so common around forums, but teal isn't actually that far off. The whole forum style is pretty boring and doesn't really give me a reason to want to continue viewing your site. As you are in a competitive niche this is something you really need to work on.
The menu bar is very odd as you have a large gap on it which doesn't contain anything. A shorter memory bar or a better spread of the links on there would work better. The menu bar and logo both seem to be floating in mid air, especially due to the large empty space on the right hand side.
The unread/no new topics markers are very boring, they are just coloured squares. There are no images on your site at all, there is nothing that tells me what your site is actually about. Not even the logo provides much information.
It is mainly the top part of the index that needs work, the actual forum part works fine, even if it is quite boring. The footer bar with links in has links overflowing which makes the whole bar look odd ad out of place.
(Score: 11/20)
Site Layout
The first thing that strikes me as odd that you are using categories as re-direct links, what is that all about? If you want to link to other sites, why not make them as links? Making them as categories makes it look like you have a whole section that no-one is posting in.
The first section containing 4 categories contains basic information about the site. The first 3 categories I don't see any issues with, and not the 4th one either really. What I don't really understand is why you have made the SOTM winner in big writing in the category description. You already have loads of links, why not just add a link to the SOTM there?
The service section seems fine, but having the Basic promotion placed there doesn't give it the coverage it deserves, I missed it a couple of times before I actually saw that it was there.
I feel that the exchange area needs a re-think as it is quite hard to navigate. You have loads of boards and sub-boards all over the place, surely you must be able to group a few of these together, there aren't even that many posts in each to need so many sub-boards. A maximum of 2 sub-boards for each category, but 1 is recommended.
In the business and marketing category you have yet again gone a bit overboard with the amount of sub-boards. A good example is the Search engine optimization board. It only contains 12 threads, yet has 3 sub-boards. This is far too much, you don't need any sub-boards, let alone a whole category for it. It would work better if the whole category was merged with the Managing your website category, where you again remove some sub-boards. This whole section needs a re-organization as you have far too many categories compared to the total amount of threads in the section.
The non-promotion section, or the off-topic section as I will call it has by far a larger amount of posts than the rest of the forum. This is never a good sign. While you have a better amount of categories here there are far too many posts in the compared to the rest of the forum. You really need to work on getting your members to post in the on-topic areas.
(Scored 8/20)
Statistics and Activity
Date Forum Opened: 24.2.11
Our members have made a total of 20,350 posts in 2,795 threads.
We currently have 742 members registered.
Your forum has been open since February this year, that means 8 months. You have averaged around 3000 posts per month. With 740 members the posts per members is downright awful. You seem to have a lot of members that just come, sign up, post a little then leave never to return. This doesn't give a positive view for further growth. Either this is the reason or you have a large amount of spam bots, I don't know which is better to assume. You have a lot to work on with your activity.
(Scored 7/20)
Staff Moderation
Your staff don't seem to be doing an amazing job either. I see posts made by spam bots that have been reviewed and moderated by staff, but instead of getting rid of them they have chosen to move them to different sections on the forum, what is that all about? I get the opinion that your staff don't know what and what isn't a spam bot, which is worrying.
Your staff need to learn how to moderate and act on the forum, they need to learn that they are representing your forum and it is important they do the job they have properly. Their activity is low and post counts aren't much better.
(Scored 7/20)
Spelling/Grammar & Professionalism
Again, not very good. The board descriptions are a prime example of this. There are many small grammatical errors such as missing punctuation and capital letters in the wrong places. All the board descriptions are short and not very professional. There are similar issues in the guidelines threads I read on your forum. Missing punctuation, mostly bullet pointed text and no properly built sentences. I get the feeling you didn't really want to write guidelines so you just threw something together quickly. Getting someone to proofread your site and come with suggestions would really help you.
(Scored 9/20)
Total Score - 42/100
Final Remarks
Strong Points
Your commitment
Things to Improve
Style, Staff, Activity
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