Medium Forum Review
First Impressions
Visiting your forum for the first time, one thing that kind of distracted me was the top "click-here-to-register" bar. The bar blocks the log-in button, register button, and around 1/3 of the site's logo is rather blocked. It even stays as you scroll down the page. That is rather uncomfortable because it blocks the view of the forum. The theme is quite good, and the activity of the forum itself is not bad. Overall it is quite inviting to join.
Appearance
The theme of the forum is not bad, I think it is customized pretty well. It is not what I expect to see from a general discussion forum, frankly speaking. The theme feels more for a technology board, perhaps because the touch of Windows Vista there. The category/forum icons and topic icons of the forum are standard ones. Your banner/logo is not bad, although the signal icon there doesn't truly resemble "the best place to chat" in my opinion. Perhaps you can brainstorm a new icon, something more related to chat and discussion, and add it to the banner. The banner has a green-white theme, you can exploit that to use for the theme too. Your new icon can also be used as your site's favicon.
The site's banner at the blog page is blurry, you might want to fix that. The blog itself is not bad, but could use more work there. You have big empty space in the left and right side of the blog and empty space at the side bar as well. Maybe you can cut the number of posts shown in the blog or only post summary to save space, or add content to the side bar. Perhaps something like latest threads in the forum, or polls, or fun events you're currently doing. One last thing is that the navigation bar for when you are at the home page is different with when you are at the forum. For the points links to be missing is not a big idea, but for the blog link to be gone might affect the site in a bad way.
Ratios
The number of category and forums is not a problem. Several forums are less populated than the others, for example "Fan Clubs" and the sub-forums of "Life" category. You may want to merge them first and see how they go, if they prove to be better they can stand on their own. Staff wise, for a forum as small as 55 members, having two administrators and two moderators might be a bit too much. Administrators are fine if you have clear distinction on who does what, though as moderators you don't need as many as two. Now that you have it, you can stay like that until you reach more than a hundred members.
Statistically, your forum has been up for around 10 months. Social Hut has 11,646 messages and 55 members. That equals to around 211 posts per member, which is a great number! When looking at the members list, though, the distribution of posts is rather sporadic; few members have way above a thousand posts, some others have few hundreds, while they others have less than that. You will have to work on getting the balance up to keep as many members as possible stay interested.
Posts
The posts primarily focuses on the general discussion section. Fine for me as you are indeed a general discussion site. Yet the next highest posts section is forum games, then introduction area. The other sections have quite big margin difference. You will have to work quite hard on these other sections, to start more interesting threads and encourage discussions. The posts and topics variation is quite good and interesting enough, especially since active members seem to actively replying on the threads. You will just have to work on the other not-so-active members and new visitors, how to keep them interested with various events and competitions maybe or cool features so that they would always find a reason to post around.
Content
The content of the site is good enough in general. The board titles and descriptions are short, simple, and clear enough. The bad side is probably that it becomes boring to have such common board titles. You may want to customize the names so it would be more appealing for visitors as well, that your site is unique. I also noticed you put exclamation mark at the end of each of your forum descriptions. While it is not as bad as using caps lock, exclamation marks still has the feeling of shouting so you may want to reduce it a bit. Grammatically I don't truly see anything wrong, good work on that.
One other concern for me is about two links you have: "Home" and "Blog". I feel you can actually merge these two pages to integrate the content better. I have no idea how many people actually visit the home page or the blog (at least from the blog comments not many people visit it). Your home page can be said as empty, with only info about statistics and a log-in box for visitors. That is actually the area where the blog must kick in, with the posts related to updates, events, and info of the forum. By splitting them like that the purpose of each section is decreased and more confusing.
Final Remarks
Social Hut is a promising general discussion forum. Although it took you quite long to get to 10,000 posts milestone, that shouldn't hinder you from keep growing. Better go slow but steady. Keep on adding content, add events and updates to keep members and visitors interested, and brainstorm to make your site unique from the other forums out there. You will reach your said goal faster than you think.
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