Fairy Tales of Nadia
Full Review by Twisted Fairytale
Scoring:
First Impressions & Appearance – (7 out of 20)
Oh honey... Where do I begin... Well, I'll start off by pointing out that your forum seems to have a case of bipolar with the way it looks. A nicer way to say this is to show that you obviously have two different themes functioning on your website. The top menu bar and the user panel you have on the index both seem to reflect a default / general theme, while index shows a separate theme. When we get to the bottom of your site, it reverts back to the light blue theme. I don't think I can stress how unprofessional this looks...
Figure 1
To me, and most likely the average user, this seems to show that you have attempted to add something new, or change something about your forum, but you just don't have the skill to do so yet. My best suggestion would be to go out and see if there is anyone here on FP, or a friend, that will install or change these parts of your forum so that they match. This break in appearance is simply displeasing...
Just a quick addition here, as I am browsing your forum, the theme switches again. Many of the headers stay dark blue, but as soon as we jump into a thread, all of the thread reverts back to light blue default... This can, and is, very displeasing to the eyes.
One aspect I will commend your site on is the very top, upper banner and menu. You seem to have a very basic banner that features a young, drawn woman with some artistic text. The banner is simple, and beautiful, as well as transparent! Yey! You also have a well designed and functioning menu consisting of a Sign in, register, donate, rules, and social link buttons. A good website has it's roots in other areas, like facebook and twitter, so good job integrating those cleanly into your website!
The only reason I have marked down the score on this area is because of your use of two themes. Like I said, it looks like someone tried to make a change, not knowing exactly what they were doing. The first priority you should have is globalizing your theme.
Site Layout – (10 out of 20)
Initial navigation around the site was relatively easy in the beginning. I was able to understand, to an extent, where I was heading to. It wasn't until I began actually reading the names of each forum that I became a little confused. You seem to have named your sections according to the deep subject of your forum, which is generally okay. The only downside to this that you begin to block out anyone who is not initially a huge part of your community. What do I mean by this? Well, I, as an outsider, have no idea who "Nadia & Sam" are, therefore, I am lost when it comes to knowing what should be housed in the "Nadia & Sam Zone."
On top of that, I feel like there are a few forums that could be merged into the same categories. For example, "Non-FTON Products" and "Nadia & Sam Zone" seem to bear similarities enough to merge. That being said, I may not be 100% correct due to the fact that there may be an underlying reason you have them separated. Like I mentioned, I am not an insider of your community, so I'm not sure what is considered a FTON Product and what is not.
Other than your index, the "Welcome to Fairy Tales of Nadia Online" box (Figure 1) at the top seems to be placed decently. I almost never see statistics placed at the top of an index, but I believe you pulled this off well. I still don't think that the difference of themes is acceptable, but if you can fix the theme, this box will fit in very well.
One more addition: while navigating your forum, I noticed that you have an overwhelming number of stickied topics and announcements. I would suggest removing some of the less-important posts because they get in the way of the average user. Every time I navigated to a new page, I would have to scroll down a plethora of topics to get where I wanted to go. This is an easy fix, and something small to improve.
In general, the layout of your site is decent. Your forum is functional and uncluttered. Some forums may need reassignment, but your index is still navigatable. There were a minimal amount of ads, instead there were an abundance of stickied topics and announcements. There are still minor improvements that could increase the navigation and functionality of your board.
Statistics and Activity – (10 out of 20)
Alright, let's take a look at your statistics...
Figure 2
So, if we take a look at your stats, you have a decent amount of posts. For 121 members, 11,000 posts is a lot. But, what we would be overlooking is the amount of posts that you have contributed to the site by yourself. You, the admin, have made over 3,000 posts on your whole forum. That shows some dedication as admin! Unfortunately, looking at your staff, most of them seem to have 1,000 - 1,500 posts themselves.
Speaking of Staff Activity, I took a look at your staff and noticed that three of your current staff have not logged in, in the past two weeks. An inactive staff never appears good on any website. You should probably have a chat with those staff and either remove them, or have them more active.
Taking a look at your forums themselves, there are a few forums that have not had a new post since October or even July. This shows that your member base may not be interested in these two forum subject. I would suggest to consider removal, or promotion, of these two forums so that you don't keep dead forums sitting on your index.
I do apologize that I seem to have wrapped up this section rather short, but I can not find much to say without 'fluffing.' In conclusion, it seems like your amazing post numbers come mostly from yourself and four or five other individuals. This is not bad, per se, but it does mean that your forum is kept alive by a very small active community. In the past day, there have only been three active members, two of those being members of this review team. It seems like your forum has a small base of consistent users, with no real door for growth. I have given you a 10 in this area for two reasons: 1) You have a decent amount of posts for the number of members present at your forum. (+) 2) Your activity is primarily based on six to seven active members. (-)
Content – (9 out of 20)
Your forum is obviously based around a specific subject matter: The Fairy Tales of Nadia. Given that, I believe that you have taken your forum and covered a very wide variety of content. You seem to have three series of cartoons that you sell, and you have created 20+ forums of content about the three series. Honestly, I commend you for that, but I believe you have too much space, for such a little subject.
Let's break this down, category by category. Your "Unnamed Zone," for which I'm confused about the name any way, contains three important categories to almost any forum: News, Suggestions, and Introductions. The only section of that forum I would consider changing is your "Outdated Updates" subforum and your "Old Introductions" subforum. Both of those subforums can be hidden from user site, just to clean up the index a good bit. There is no real need for the average user to access those anyway.
Moving on to the "FTON Heart" category. I believe that this should be the literal heart of your forum. Since your forum seems to be based around this comic series, I feel that you should promote more activity in these threads. I feel like you have a lot of potential in these forums, and they are constructed fairly well. In your case, I wouldn't change anything here.
Your "Non-FTON Products" category name is a little confusing. I'm honestly not sure if you want me to purchase Non-FTON Products here or what, until I look at the forum name. I'm not sure why you also have a "Myths & Fiction" subforum for your "Literature & Comics" forum. In my opinion, if you are going to have a forum based on literature, all literature should be discussed there, unless you break it into
many genres. Same goes for your Anime Discussions subforum.
I enjoy how you put an emphasis on letting users show off their own creations under "Nadia & Sam Zone," but I would consider renaming the category to something more direct. At the moment, the category's name shows nothing about what will be housed inside. The same goes for your final category: the name doesn't fit, but everything looks about fine... Except for the "Fathia' Store," that is... That forum has not had posts since July 21st. I believe that inactivity really looks bad for your forum, so consider removal.
My last observation was that you offer a great amount of content that I'm not sure many people use, but could one day. For example, your Wikia page. That is a very nice resource, and I'm sure that when you have a growing member base, more people will use, but I'm not sure it's used too much at this point. I do commend you for having it, though! To talk about the "FTON History" link for one minute (I'll have more to say in the next section), I like how you have that available for people to read. I would consider revising what you have written there with a little less detail, because many people will see that long passage and continue to the next thing they were doing.
In conclusion, you have a lot of content and resources available on your forum, but some of the resources are not used often. The quality of content provided (wikia and history, to be exact) is weak, but I will get to that more in the next section. You provide a lot of space for members to discuss a variety of topics, which is good until you overfill your index. The first step I would take in cleaning up your content is to remove the subforums that I mentioned above, and consider some of the other changes mentioned in this review.
Spelling/Grammar & Professionalism – (11 out of 20)
Okay... This will be the section with the most consistent errors. Let me begin with a statement. Please understand that I am in no way attempting to belittle you at all by my suggestions in this section... The one sentence that will summarise these
whole next paragraphs is:
I can tell you are not a native English speaker.
Now, I feel like I need to give you a few examples why this is... Let's take a look at your "FTON History." I have bolded every area where there is an elementary English error.
FTON History said:
Hello, i want to show you the history of FTONonline: Fairy Tales Of Nadia online is not like any other forum on the web, it was founded by me, Chahine im 23/12/ 2010 hosted on Free forums .Org,The only reason of creating this forum is to spread FTON around the web and the world,Plus i wanted to an admin of a forum. In the begining , i had some diffculties in running the forum because i wasn't able to cusomize it because i couldn't afford for the advanced hosting, also i was not very good with forum adminstration, months later, i met a friend who had installed a proper phpBB3 forum for me in byethost, however i messed it up because i haven't any clue of coding a simple MOD, So i went back to ff.org with the same forum.
That probably wasn't the best example, but you can see that there are quite a few errors in your structure and grammar. These errors stretch across your board.
The other thing I wanted to mention about your professionalism is the usernames of your staff. In a professional environment, usernames may be colored differently, but I have never seen a professional site add blocks of color, strike through, or underlined usernames. These greatly decrease the professional appearance of your forum.
In a quick conclusion, your spelling and grammar need a lot of work to be on par with a native English speaker. The mistakes do not hinder my use of the forum, but they do hurt the experience in a very aesthetic way. I would highly suggest hiring a native English speaker to translate your forum for you, as well as any official material you post.
Total Score - (47 out of 100)
Final Remarks:
Before you become demoralized, please remember that a 47 here on Forum Promotion is around average (average being 50). There are some obvious changes that need to take place at FTON, and I believe I mentioned some of those earlier. Spending this much time on your forum has gotten me interested on your comics, and I will probably go read some of them when I have free time. But as I said, with some changes and tweaks, FTON Online could easily become an above average forum. Especially with the subject matter it is focused on.
Good job, and seriously keep up the effort. I can tell you have put a lot into this forum. Do not take anything I have said to put you down or keep you from running your website. You are doing great, and keep it up!
🙂
Strengths:
- - The very unique subject of your forum
- Some of your active, devoted staff members
Weaknesses:
- - The obvious use of two themes
- The constant grammar mistakes throughout the site
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