Webmaster Sun
Review by MrGravyCakes
First Impressions
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I was very surprised when I fished your site. I was not expecting such a nice, clean looking forum. No annoying message popping up asking the use to register, no intrusive ads. It's a very nice experience and it made me register. On my first scroll down the forum I saw the nice clean theme, the ads to one side which is lovely so you can avoid them easily, nothing popping up in your face. The forum titles are easy to read and the member count next to each forum tells me that the forum is very active. I did, however have an issue with one aspect. The welcome PM that everyone gets is good, but the way that PMs are announced to a user could be improved. It comes up as a pop up and stops the user doing what they are doing. It surprised me and I had to click off it. This is a bit intrusive. A message on the forum index page is enough to notify the user of a new PM.
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Excellent
Site Statistics
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As soon as I look at the site statistics, I know this is going to be a positive section. I'm very happy to say your forum is very active and has a good, strong community. Your stats are right at the top of the forum which is different, but it's absolutely fine to have them there. I, personally find it a very good idea because users can see the latest posts and easily navigate to them. They are organised into the sections that they were posted in on the forum, which is a clever and unique idea.
A lot of threads are started by your members. This is very good that you do not have to rely on staff to start posts. An important part of being staff is to reply to members posts and this is what you do. I searched through the latest posts and saw that a lot of the posts that your members made had been replied to swiftly by staff. This is awesome and this is one of the reasons your forum does so well.
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Excellent
Site Structure
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At the top of the forum, you have the main section dedicated to marketing and development. This is one of the key aspects of your forum niche, so it's great that you have that at the top, because people won't need to scroll down to find the things they are looking for. I like how you have a section for both 'Web Hosting Discussion' and 'Web Hosting Offers' it separates them out nicely rather than having them all in one long web hosting category. Your marketplace section is quite long, I think a few could be merged. An example of this could be 'Buy and sell websites' and 'Domains'. In the 'Services' section, this could have some subforums added to it regarding specific services. That way people will be able to find the exact service they are looking for. Maybe 'Content' could be a Subforum for 'Services'.
I like how you have a quick menu that allows users to navigate quickly to a specific part of the site. That saves them looking through everywhere and it saves them time.
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Good
Final Remarks
This is a very active, well-established community. It looks professional and clean. It is easy to use and it does what a webmaster forum should do. Changing the layout a little but as I mentioned before will make the forum look a bit more organised and put all the relevant forums together. Great job on the forum, it is a very good forum!
Your Score
