Name of Site: Spud Gaming Site Genre:Gaming Site URL:http://spudgaming.com Type of Review (Full/Quick/Questionnaire):Quick Opening Date:1 November 2013 Additional Notes:
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Landing Page
I'm going to include both of your landing pages in here.
The first being before you are logged in. I absolutely love the look and feel of this page. It made me want to sign up. One problem though, I couldn't. Both of the spots for me to click to sign up were broken. Now one of them said it was broken, so that was fine, but it told me to use the other one. When I clicked the other one, all it did was refresh the page. For me to sign up, I had to go into the forums and sign up that way.
The second landing page is after I was logged in. It looks good and I like the layout of it, especially the header, but there's a couple things I would change here. Below the navigation bar where it says "spudgaming", it says "My Ultimate Page" on top of it. Also, to the right of it is a hyperlink that doesn't really work that says "LET'S SET UP MY OWN PAGE!". I think you should just remove these things, unless you want the setting up of a page to be allowed by the clans, then put that into the navigation bar somewhere.
Right below this, you have three things. They say "RETURN TO INDEX", "I WANT THE BLOG", & "I NEED THE FORUMS". These are fine for the most part, but what's the point of the "RETURN TO INDEX"? All it does is reload the same page that you're already viewing.
I like that picture with the car, however some of the orange text is hard to read. Most of it is pretty good, but I have a little bit of trouble with some, and that could just be me, I don't know.
Personally, I like the landing page before I was logged in so much, I would like this one to be similar to that, but it's fine that it's not. Now, below the car picture, it says this, "HERE'S A LIST OF TOP 10 LATEST ARTICLES CREATED RECENTLY:", and there is no articles or anything, now I'm assuming there is nothing there since you are still in beta, so I'll leave that alone for now. I just wanted to point it out just in case that's not why there's no articles.
Right below that you have a box which says, "SPUD GAMING REMINDS YOU...", now this is fine, but right below that, there is a huge white space before I get to the footer. You should get rid of this white space either by adding some other background, like the landing page when logged out, or just removing it completely.
Overall, I really like the landing pages, you just have a few things that need fixed.
About Page
I like your about page. I like how well you describe what Spud Gaming is. I also love that you made a YouTube video to encourage people to sign up. This about page makes me want to join this website. However, as great as this page is, there are a couple minor things you need to improve.
The first is this sentence, "...site that was foundered by Mark Moore...", 'foundered' should be 'founded'.
I like the idea of hovering over each question to have it pop up, but it doesn't work that great in my opinion. If I go to hover over the first question and accidentally go to far, the first one will drop down, and then it'll go away since I went too far and the second one will drop down. Now I have to wait for the first one to finish going away, and then I can highlight it again. I also have to leave my cursor on the question otherwise it'll go away. I should be able to move it over the answer and it still be there. It's not a major thing, just a little bit frustrating.
This question is worded a little weird to me, "Why Spud Gaming and Should I Subscribe or Sign Up?". I think you should maybe change it to something along the lines of "Why Spud Gaming? Why should I subscribe or sign up?". Also, under this question you have a few grammar mistakes. Whenever there is a comma, there needs to be a space after it. You also randomly have words capitalized when they shouldn't be. Words should only be capitalized when they are at the beginning of a sentence or they are a proper noun. You also have this capitalization problem in the questions.
One last thing I don't like with this page is all of the white below the video. Either get rid of it or fill it with something.
Weaknesses:
Boards/Forums
First thing here, what do you want to call it? Boards or forums? You need to be consistent here. In your navigation bar, it's called "Boards", but then the link is /forums
It took me a while to figure out how to get back to the landing page without changing the URL. I don't that the "Hide/Show Navigation" should even be an option. I feel like it should always be shown. Also, it doesn't have your logo when looking at it from the forums. It has the MyBB logo instead.
Your activity here is terrible. Now, this could be due to a lack of advertising since you're still in beta/alpha, but I had to mention it anyway as you only have 3 forums that have been posted in this month. It wouldn't hurt to start advertising just the forum that way when you launch the rest of the website, you'll already be drawing in some traffic and new members will see that there's already some activity there so may be more inclined to join.
I also hate the current theme you are using for your forum. I feel like it is just too boring as it is almost all white and gray. With the design of most of your other website, I was hoping this was going to look a lot better. You should look to get a custom theme made or maybe just get a new one.
Final Remarks:
Sorry I couldn't really give you a 2nd weakness as a lot of the current pages are not even accessible, and I covered everything that I think needs to be fixed already.
For the most part, I really like the look and feel of this site. There's really just a few minor fixes that need to be done before you officially launch your site. Good luck! 😀
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