Your Forum Review
First Impressions & Appearance
When a potential user visits your forum, you want them to have the best first impressions possible. I wouldn't say my first impressions were perfect, but they were good. There is always room for improvement though, and I will try my best to help you turn these good first impressions to the best first impressions possible. First of all, I really like your forum's logo. It looks sleek and professional. Secondly, it's good to see that you have a matching favicon, I have reviewed many forums without one. Next, I like your forum's default avatar. It matches the theme, the logo, the favicon, and the forum in general. The default avatar isn't showing up on the posts though for some reason, it only shows up on the table at the top of the forum. Lastly, I really like your forum's custom theme. It looks great. You did an excellent job with it. The color scheme is fantastic, and everything flows together quite nicely. The theme is sleek and professional, but still basic. One thing I feel that is a bit weird is the tech-feel I am getting from your theme. It's certainly not the feel I'd expect from a general chat forum. The lines on the header are the reason why, I think. I think a better pattern on the header might be suitable. Also, the posting ranks and image ranks need to be changed. The image ranks still have the exchange icon which is from your old forum and the posting ranks are "Sergeant," etc. Those posting ranks don't fit your forum at all really. Overall, I had some pretty good first impressions, but there are a couple things that could be better.
(Score: 17/20)
Site Layout
I feel you have a very nice layout. There are some improvements that could be made though. First off, all those links at the top of the forum makes that part of the layout feel a bit unorganized and complex. You have 23 links at the top of the forum. That is excessive, but if you really need all those links, I feel it would really benefit your forum to get roll-over drop down menus added to the main menu which is located on the header. Then you could remove all the other links at the top of the forum. That would look much more organized and navigation would be a lot easier. Next, let's get to the categories and boards of your layout. Your forum has a total of fourteen boards in four categories. Your forum is a general chat forum, so there is a lot to talk about, so I'd say fourteen is right around the number of boards I'd accept a general chat forum to have during the opening stage. I think this part of the layout is nice though. I am assuming you will be making changes to the "Your Life Experiences" category, as that is from your old forum. Lastly, I don't think "Suggestions and feedback" should be a sub-board of "News and Updates." Suggestions and feedback is very important, thus I feel it deserves its own board. Overall, there's only a few things that could be better, regarding your layout.
(Score: 16/20)
Statistics and Activity
As of right now, your forum has managed to accumulate 587 posts, 190 topics, and 56 members. Your forum isn't open yet, so almost all of these statistics are from the database on your old forum. There really isn't a proper way to say anything about your statistics and activity then. It's good that you are starting your forum off with the old database, it should give your forum a head start. That is all I will say about this though because that is what you requested. I wish you the best of luck improving your activity once your forum is open though.
(Scored 6/20)
Staff Moderation
According to the "The team" page, your forum has a total of four staff members. One of the staff members is in the "Valued Members" group, so I am assuming that this person is no longer staff member, "The team" page just has not been updated yet. If that is the case, your forum actually has a total of three staff members. Two are administrators, and one is on the Community Team, so this person is basically a moderator. The Community Team Member and one of the administrators (you) are fine, you two are both active and are logging in. The other administrator should no longer be staff. This person has not made a single post, and hasn't logged in since March, which was back on your old forum. I am going to assume that you are planning on removing this administrator soon, and if that's the case, you really only have two legit staff members on the new forum. Your forum has not opened yet, so two staff members should be great until you have opened your forum and the forum becomes more active. I think it would be acceptable to add one or two more staff members in the next few weeks though. This stage of your forum's progression is crucial in deciding whether your forum succeeds or not. A couple more staff members might be able to help with this. Good luck with these changes!
(Scored 14/20)
Spelling/Grammar & Professionalism
All the staff members appear to be posting with professionalism for the most part, but I see a lack of professionalism in some posts. I see a couple of recent posts by staff members with lack of capitalization of proper nouns for example. The two active staff members seem to be doing well with spelling/grammar & professionalism for the most part though. Now, let's get to the board descriptions, important topics, etc. First off, let's look at the board description of the very first board. "Check here for all the latest news and updates that are taking place on with Shareyourexp." should be "Check here for all the latest news and updates that are taking place at TalkDiscuss." Secondly, check out the board description of "Introduce Yourself." There is an unneeded space between "your" and "self" and "Shareyourexp" needs to be "TalkDiscuss." Thirdly, there a couple spelling and grammar errors in the board descriptions in the "Your Life Experiences" category, but I will ignore that as I think you are going to remove the category. Fourthly, in the board descriptions of the last two categories, there seems to be many run-on sentences. You can read them and see what I mean. They all seem to be worded strangely. They are also repetitive; they all sound quite similar. I think you should juice up your board descriptions a bit. You could do that by starting your board description with a question, a fact, a quote, etc. Lastly, you start off your rules topic with "Participation in the TalkDiscuss.com's website constitutes agreement to the following guidelines," the first "the" should be removed. Good luck making improvements!
(Scored 15/20)
Total Score - 68/100
Final Remarks
Strong Points
Your forum's theme (although, you could say that it gives a tech-feel, which isn't really the type of feeling you should get from a theme on a general chat forum), graphics (logo, favicon, etc), and your database (which gives you a good start statistically).
Things to Improve
Your forum's staff team (The team page, etc), topic creation (having the staff team create topics before the grand opening is good to really get discussion generating), ranks (need to be updated as they're from your last forum), and a few smaller things which are mentioned above.
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