Your Forum Review
First Impressions & Appearance - (Out of 20)
Taking a first look the site looks ok, I must be honest here your site is well organized but the look of the logo and few other things looks a little bland. But on a plus you site looks real active and the rest of the forums looks nice, really like those little icons you have for each section.
So let’s take a look at your site starting with the appearance, and as I already said love the little icons on the site for each section as it’s very creative and a nice touch. The blue and creamy white I would normally say is too bland but some how you have made it work nice job with your colour choices. But the banner up the top and the Facebook and Youtube announcements make the top look real ugly, I would recommend you move those 2 announcements to another location. As for the banner I can see why some would like it, but 1 putting an add with it does not look good, you can always put adds in other posts around the site, and I’m sure you can make a better font for the title then that, as I can show you other fonts better for a technical style if you want, PM me if you like be glad to help.
(Scored 14/20)
Site Layout - (Out of 20)
Your layout looks a treat and I really like the easy navigation of the different sections, it’s much better then one big long forum going down one page. As Midnight said the affiliates down the bottom looks nice and the layout up the top with the forum, blog, members so on adds a nice simple touch. I had no trouble finding anything I wanted with more then a few clicks, so a big 2 thumbs up from me for your sites navigation and layout.
If I had to be picky I would recommend you move the forum stats to your portal/front page instead of being at the bottom of every page. Makes everything you have done to free up space on your site look bad, you don’t really need forum stats and board stats on the bottom of every page.
(Scored 18/20)
Statistics and Activity - (Out of 20)
Ok I’m going to be completely frank here, your forum has been open nearly a whole year now, and you have 6,425 posts and 2,728 threads with 855 members. Out of all that the only thing that looks good is 855 members, as after a year you could do much better then that. But with that said I have seen sites open for longer with less stats then that, so lets say you doing an average job of it, it’s a great start but really could use room for improvement.
But there is a really big problem on your site, and in your last review Midnight pointed this out, that most of your members have made little to no posts at all. And now 3 months later I’m reviewing your site looks like it has only gotten worse not better. I did the math for you, out of your 855 members roughly 680 have made ZERO posts, roughly 130 have made between 1 – 10 posts, and the last 40 – 50 are the only lot with more then 10 posts. For 855 members that is really sad, or really blunt that those members are fake and just fillers to make the forum look more active. I really suggest you get yourself some real members ad delete those that are fake or inactive. As anyone who has been around forums enough can tell something is up by looking at your 6000 posts to 855 member ratio and tell something is a miss.
(Scored 4/20)
Staff Moderation - (Out of 20)
You really need to take another look at some of your staff members with half of them being inactive since March or April. But that staff that are around are well behaved and very professional, I looked at several posts around the board and your staff always hold members with respect. This is what I like to see, as a good team of staff members is the backbone of a good forum. Also a little side note the user called Admin (sites owner) is not very active, might be a good idea is the site’s owner was in on the action a lot more.
(Scored 12/20)
Spelling/Grammar & Professionalism - (Out of 20)
Great writing on the site and around the board, the staff know how to write properly and from what I can see good grammar and spelling to top it off. As a writer by trade myself trust me when I say your writing skills are very good, and I cant really say much more on the posts around the board then that nice job.
But as it’s me doing this review I tend to be more picky then the other members of the review team, specially when it comes to this writing section of the review. And I would like to make a suggestion here that you could make a big improvement on the board. That is your topic descriptions, to be honest very bland and boring and no sense of style what so ever. Lets take Chit-Chat in the general section for example, here is what you have written for the description - Talk about anything, Jokes, World News, Interesting facts, Tech & Game News etc. As you can see all that says is the bare minimum of info and with no style or any sense life in it at all. Try spicing things up a bit get a good description in there and add some humor, life and style into them. For example you could call the section the Chit-Chat Lounge, and write a good description for it, here is a small sample for you. This is the Chit-Chat Lounge where you can pull up a seat, and order a coffee while you talk to your friends. Anything and everything is on the topic table here jokes, world news, games or even what you had for lunch yesterday. As you can see that is much better and the section sounds more interesting and more inviting with a description like that.
(Scored 15/20)
Total Score - (63 of 100)
Final Remarks:
From what I can see you still need to do loads more work to get this site to the glory it could be, this site has potential but you will need to put in the hard yards to get there.
What was most liked about the website/forums:
The site layout and how well organized it is.
What was disliked most about the website/forums:
The fact you have so many fake or inactive members.
How could I get you (The Reviewer) to join my website?
Personally you would need to fix plenty up before I would consider joining, but there is always a bright star in the future.
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