Your Forum Review
First Impressions & Appearance - (Out of 20) What caught my attention when I first entered your site was your
graffitiesque pattern found around your navigation bar and banner. I noticed it because of what it symbolizes, which is art, something people don't usually expect to find in a forum, much less a promotion forum. It makes a visual impact because of how its rounded edges play off the navbar's rounded corners, and heavy gradient. Your main banner is simple and clean, it gets the point across and doesn't waste space filling it with needless tidbits of information or taglines. A basic
"Shareyourexp.com" with a logo is all that's needed. Your favicon upon further inspection looks good because not only its own design, but of how closely it bears a semblance to Forum Promotion's own. Your navigation icons are all different, which is a good eye on detail, even if members, log in and register all display the same generic person, they each represent something in their own right. When we scroll down the site from its silky smoothness of the navbar, header, and borders, suddenly, the elements are changed. The advertisement box is a straight-edge rectangle with nothing in it. Guest announcements is the very same, only with some content inside. Then this pattern continues downward until the very last, wherein it says board index, the team, and delete all board cookies. The problem here is the abrupt break from slow smoothness at the top to squared, chopped off edges and corners everywhere else. It gives the impression of an unfinished project, as if it's still in construction, and it reflects poorly on either the founder, graphic designer, and sometimes both. However, this isn't to say you haven't tried, you did indeed post a topic in your news board asking your member's opinion on the theme and if it should be changed. From my point of view and opinion, I would say it shouldn't be completely altered, all it needs is some refinement. Going back to the rounded and curvaceous pattern I mentioned earlier, I only see that repeated once more on the index, and that's in the borders of the general discussions board, and that's due to the fact that it contains 9 forums, stretching it out far enough to see it.
For your icons, I think you could put more imagination into them to liven your forums up. You seem to have a small theme already started with your arrows, having members using arrow-based ranks as well, so I suggest basing them off of that instead of the overused generic piece of paper on a clipboard, or bulletin. A black arrow could indicate no new posts, a green arrow; new, and a red arrow; locked. For the topic icons, you have more flexibility with all the types of meanings, more symbols to work with, however, if you want a solid scheme, they would be in at least, deviants of arrows. Your new topic and reply buttons are done justice, a plus sign adorning a speech balloon conveys the exact meaning of its message clearly and concisely. Your banners in social networks are all displayed neatly and quite poised, well done on that. Lastly, your background. I can't help but draw comparisons between yours and Forum Promotion's sites. You both seem to have used the same hosting and design software, and seemed to have taken the same, if not nearly identical designing cues. If you're taking influence from FP, that's not a bad thing as a foundation. However, it's important that you develop your own style, lest others accuse you along the road of imitation and eventual loss of activity, since you are advertising your site
on FP, it's something to be wary of.
All in all, you have a good base to work with. Try to accentuate what you already started and keep going in your own direction.
(Scored 16/20)
Site Layout - (Out of 20)
Starting with you navbar, it has all the essential amenities, members, search, home, log in, and register, but what's interesting is how you added your own new posts button. I've never actually seen someone make a whole button dedicated to viewing new posts, and that's a neat idea that could set a trend in forums. Given the gap in your navbar between members and log in, (for me anyway, seeing as how I'm a guest) you could keep following that idea, taking basic forum tools and making them navbar features. In turn, you could make a button with a link to the overall top 20 posters, or a button with a link to stats. Concerning your time format;
"It is currently 03 Nov 2010, 06:30", doesn't sound very natural if you try to verbally express this. I'm not familiar with your particular host, but as far as I know, every administration control panel should have a date/time format editor, and with that I'd suggest changing it to something more human, i.e;
"It is now Nov 3 2010, 6:30PM". The advertisement box directly below it serves no purpose. If it's meant to be used as a permanent service, I could understand it being there with something in it, but if there's nothing in it, it's needless and confusing to someone new, wondering what's wrong with their browser, or if there's supposed to be something there they can't see. Next, your guest announcements box is shown saying welcome to Shareyourexp.com community forums, click ucpmode=register to register. Just 2 suggestions with this, and that would be to omit the words "community forums" from the welcome message, because it's evident that's what it is, and people can focus more on the actual name. Second, wrap the link tags, and make it a word, i.e;
register by clicking here instead of the raw link, because that's unappealing, and some people might not know why there's a weird string of words instead of in plain English. All for the benefit of the ease of access.
On your forums, I'd remove the "and" from "News and Announcements", and replace it with an ampersand (&), because all of your other forum titles use that. With the welcome new members forum, I would suggest renaming it to Welcome, Introductions, or even New Members, because having a command (Welcome new members is an instruction, not a name, grammatically speaking) for a title doesn't seem to fit well unless you're going for a much more casual atmosphere, which it doesn't look like judging by the rest of your forum. Your news and feedback subforums, SYE Events, and Bug Reporting, respectively, could be merged with their respective index forums, there's no need for a separation if the main forum already serves the original purpose, especially considering SYE's age and activity levels. Onto gaming discussions, the subforum is really disorganized. There doesn't seem to be any pattern or logical progression in it, because you have flash, PC, World of Warcraft, Aion, and PS3. Those are platforms, specific games, companies, developers, and consoles, they don't fit in the same categories with each other. Now, if you had subforums for PC, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, that would be a bit more sensible because this way you have every modern platform and company, and no guest will be dissuaded with discrimination this way or that, however they may see it, this way there's no bias. Music & Movies aren't really interrelated, it'd be better if they were separated, because each subject could hold its own popular discussion alone. TV Shows is fine, but having it titled simply "TV" wouldn't be bad either. Now, media discussion and world news could be merged into News Media, doubling the activity of one forum, and reducing index length. General sports and hobbies are fine, but renaming General Sports Discussions to "Sports" would look a lot more natural than having to describe what it is in the actual title, that's what the forum description is meant for. For your life forum, the only item I might suggest is removing the fashion subforum, because I can not imagine it ever gaining any significant amounts of activity, here you're just cutting your losses. Your technology forum seems just about balanced, the listed subjects are enough alike to be in the same category, but distinct enough not to be considered the same thing, only repeated. Renaming suggestions would be Current/Future Technology to simply Technology, since technology applies to all advances in tools, in all tenses of past, present, and future. Computers & The Internet, just remove the "The", it's not really necessary. Your general off topic forum could be renamed to something a bit simpler, like the lounge, the break room, random, but it's up to you, that is the point of that forum, to have a freer space than the rest of the site. Now, I do believe the SYE Market should be moved under the Shareyourexp category, (the top one) since it's directly associated with the site, its matters, and features. The only subforum I have a problem with is the General Marketplace, because the other marketplaces name a specific item or value to be marketed, it would be more indicative if it were "Other Markets", or "Miscellaneous Marketing".
One last bit, when there are subforums listed, there is a word before it saying
"Subforum(s)", I know it can be modded to have that removed, and it's a little word, but I think every step towards simplicity helps, and that might.
(Scored 14/20)
Statistics and Activity - (Out of 20)
All right, so your forum's been open roughly 4 months now. Let's see how you've been doing since then. In this time frame, you have earned-- and this is when I notice that you changed forum servers and lost all your data.
(Scored /20)
Staff Moderation - (Out of 20)
(Scored /20)
Spelling/Grammar & Professionalism - (Out of 20)
(Scored /20)
Total Score - (Out of 100)
Final Remarks:
What was most liked about the website/forums:
What was disliked most about the website/forums:
How could I get you (The Reviewer) to join my website?
After you have read your review, please click the following link and rate our service to help us make it better for you.... [
Click Here]
.
