Your Forum Review
First Impressions & Appearance - (Out of 20)
The first thing I see when I open your forum is the banner at the top which catches my eye.. I like this a lot, you did an excellent job with this banner.
I'm also a very big fan of a centered board, like here at FP. This helps to avoid that cluttery look we see on a lot of forums.
I also think you have an outstanding default theme here, and overall I'd register to your site within seconds if I was a guest.
(Scored 20/20)
Site Layout - (Out of 20)
I can't say I notice a ton of problems, but there are some things that need some modifying.
First, we have in your Rock 1 Front Desk, a few small issues relating to board placement. Rules and Announcements should be first, and this I applaud you for, however, you don't need an entire subforum for Rules board, all you need is a sticky topic or even a global announcement with your forums rules. I notice you have multiple rules topics but these can be divided to the specific forums that they relate to, IE - place your Showoff Rules thread in the respective forum.
Then, you can just keep one global announcement with the Universal Rules for the entire board.
I also suggest you not place Introductions so high up, this is something that belongs at the lowest part of your Front Desk.
I also don't see a need for that entire contest board, I suggest you make it a subforum of Announcements and Rules in order to open up space.
If you choose to take my suggestions it would look a little like this:
Category: Rock 1 Front Desk
--Board: Rules & Announcements
----Subforum: Contests and Awards
--Board: Help Center
----Subforum: Suggestions & Feedback
--Board: Introductions
This way you are relieved of the clutter of having four boards in your front desk.
I can't say I particularly like that gigantic register image, but it seems to work with 1070 redirected hits, so I'm not going to suggest against it
🙂
Your General Discussion Category looks great, nothing to talk about there. Everything seems to be in order.
Now, you have an entire category devoted to forums. Look at how popular it is, it's really no sense in keeping this entire board up there with a section for Forum Reviews and Site Databases, etc. If I were you I'd delete this entire category, move the Forum Discussions board under your General Discussion Category as a subforum, and you can move " Advertise Your Site " down to your " Other Features and Service " category.
Your board is a general chat site, there's really no sense in having this entire section dedicated to forum advancement. That's why it'd be best to ditch this category. Not all people own forums, and the majority of guests are going to feel swamped with an ENTIRE category area devoted to site promotion.
Other features and services looks great, nothing wrong here.
Graphics Zone seems to pull it's weight with tons of posts coming in, so that is best left alone.
My real problem with your layout is the entire category devoted to forum promotion and discussion. This may seem like a good idea now when the majority of your members and posters are coming from forum owners on Promotion Forums such as Forum Promotion, but soon your board will branch out and not all guests are going to be forum owners. You can't devote an entire category to something maybe only 5% of the people on the Internet have.
(Scored 16/20)
Statistics and Activity - (Out of 20)
Well, your board was founded two years ago apparently but now it was re-opened three weeks ago. It seems to be doing pretty well, I would keep up the exchanges, double your promotion efforts, and you will succeed.
(Scored 18/20)
Staff Moderation - (Out of 20)
One word- Too many.
You've got 9 staff members, counting yourself, not counting the test admin account.
You went real overboard with this, and I think it's time to cut some of the inactive staff.
A few of these staff members haven't been active since JULY OF 2007! This is a serious problem my friend, and you've got to get rid of the inactive staff.
Also, you don't need to set yourself as a moderator of every board. It looks like a total mess. As an Administrator you have Super Moderator privileges on any forum across the board, as does NewKirk, your Global Moderator.
The real problem here is that you have yet to weed out inactive and undedicated staff, and the fact that you have 9 staff members on such a small forum.
(Scored 8/20)
Spelling/Grammar & Professionalism - (Out of 20)
Everything is in order here other than the ugliness of having " Moderated By: KMROCK " on every single board.. as I said you can remove yourself as individual moderator, as Administrator on Invision Power Board you can moderate any forum.
(Scored 18/20)
Total Score - 80 (Out of 100)
Final Remarks:
Your board has some great potential, and I have to suggest you look into going over to GoDaddy and buying a domain name. I don't suggest this a lot, but you can get a .COM over there for 10 bucks.. I highly suggest this. The theme you have is phenomenal, you as the administrator seem very dedicated, and your site is really running well.
The real problem here is that you have so much inactive staff and also that you have an entire
category devoted to Forum Promotion..
What was most liked about the website/forums:
The theme you chose and the fun contests to entertain members.
What was disliked most about the website/forums:
The fact that there is an entire category devoted to forum promotion on a general chat forum, and I also didn't like the huge amount of inactive staff.
How could I get you (The Reviewer) to join my website?
I would actually consider joining and being pretty active if you fix up the staff issues and re-organized the whole forum advertising area.
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