PunBB Design
Review by Atrox
First Impressions
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The first impression, for me, was not very good. The logo was very cramped up at the top and the theme was not to my taste. I saw an advertisement out of place, half cut off. The one I'm talking about is the "Create a ProBoards Forum". I'm sure that there is some way to correct the positioning of that advertisement, it needs to be done. I also noticed an ugly block containing the latest post/topic information. The "Most active posters of the week" drop down list was actually creeping out of the box making it look untidier and uglier than it already is. Along with that, the advertisement under the "RECENT TOPICS SYSTEM V1.08012014-JQ1.9.1" (which needs to be re-named in my opinion) bar was cutting up and into the it. These could be some of the reason you're not seeing new sign-ups.
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Poor
Design Quality
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I did not like the theme at all, it all looks very messy. The two buttons at the right hand side of the navigation bar are not of equal height and in the header, for some reason. After looking at the header for a while, I can see a slight change in color at the right of the logo and the and the far right, this may be small, but it still looks untidy. Also, the dark blue background of the navigation bar seems to, at points, invade the lighter blue background. Once again, a very small thing, but it still looks bad. I think perhaps a theme change may well be in order.
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Poor
Site Statistics
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It seems that there have been no posts today, and there are some forums that haven't been posted in for the last few days. This is something that is often the reason why guests don't actually sign up. They'll want to see daily posting, not forums that haven't been posted in for two or more days. Also, I don't understand why you have to replace the last posting date on some forums with "Forum Protected". I think that restricting the viewing of the forum would be good enough, viewers still want to see that these forums are being posted in. It may also cause people to just sign up out of curiosity and then leave again. It shouldn't be too hard to get your forum active, you had 30 members connect within the past 48 hours, you should encourage them to post a little bit more.
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Poor
Staff Professionalism
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For this part, I usually like to look at the part of the forum that has all of the staff announcements. So I took a visit to the "Forum Announcements" forum. Straight from the off, I could see some errors within the titles of the topics. Things such as 'A good news", "How to purchase a VIP", "Old Like System is reworked". These errors should have been picked up by you or another member of staff quite quickly. When you read out those titles, or even just read the text, it doesn't seem right. Onto the actual content, in "A good news", the first sentence after "Hello," was wrong. I read "We finally want to announce" and immediately wondered, why were you waiting for yourself to finally desire to announce something? You aren't waiting for yourself to want to announce the news, you've already announced it. You need to work on these announcements and proof-read them. I also saw this in one of your moderators replies on the same topic, "That is a great new, the traffic exchange is back" and then "Thank Rapid". You and a few members of your moderation team need to work on proof-reading.
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Very Poor
Originality
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I think that you snatch some points on this part of the review, just because I haven't seen many forums like this. I'm not sure whether or not the focus of the forum is PunBB design or Forumotion design but either way, it's still something that I very rarely see. I don't really have much to say other than that about this part of the review, so I do apologize for that.
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Good
Site Structure
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Because of the name of the forum, PunBB Design, I would expect the forums within to be about PunBB. But instead, the only forum based on theme designing for a forum is "Forumotion Skins". I think that the forum should have been named to suit the type of forum it was meant to be. Other than that, your categories seem to be in logical order with the Community based forums at the top, then followed by the main focus of the forum and after that, still sticking with the whole design idea before dropping into the off-topic section. Whilst this is a very good layout, I think you could come up with some more creative names.
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Average
Grammar & Spelling
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I always like to do this for the text on the index page, because it's the first thing that people see/read. First of all, "Forum Feedbacks" there is no need for the s on the end of "Feedbacks", get rid of it. Secondly, in the "Forumotion Skins" description", "This is a right place for finding a fully customizable skins for your Punbb forum." was torturous to read. Take that out and replace it with, "This is where you'll find a fully customizable skin for your PunBB forum. This is something that I'm able to do on many forums, because people do not bother to read back to themselves what they've written. If you'd like more corrections, please PM me and I'll be happy to re-write them.
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Poor
Final Remarks
I like the idea of your forum because there aren't many out there like it. However, I think that the name of the forum really does confuse many visitors. Simply because they'll expect it to be about PunBB design and not Forumotion skin designs. I think when choosing the name you should have thought it over. I hope that you take some of these suggestions on board. I wish you the very best of luck!
Your Score
