Your Forum Review
First Impressions & Appearance
When I first visited your forum, my first impression was amazing! I absolutely love your theme, it’s actually a bit similar to the one I use on my forum. I could immediately tell it was a gaming forum and soon discovered I was correct when I scrolled down. Your banner looks amazing as well, I especially like that it’s animated. I notice you have 2 themes, but one of them is just the default. Most gamers prefer dark themes but many do prefer light, so I think you should consider getting a light theme as well to give people the option.
I like how you have custom board icons for new posts etc, but when I go into each board I see you still have the default boring thread icons. I think these would look better if you had some custom thread icons made similar to the board icons. Your favicon easily shows members your forum in their bookmarks making it easier to find the site. I like that it’s your forum’s initials, it stands out in bookmarks and shows that it is The 47 Ronin Forum and not just another site in their long list bookmarks.
I see you also have a facebook page and a map on the sidebar which I haven’t seen before, it looks great and makes you unique. Other than the thread icons and possibly adding a light theme I can’t see much that can be improved in your appearance. Keep up the good work.
🙂
(Score: 19/20)
Site Layout
I see you have 32 boards, which is way too much in my opinion. You should consider merging many of them together. I think general discussion would look better in the social zone, because it doesn’t really have anything to do with the site. And announcements doesn’t really need it’s own category, it would work just as well in The 47 Ronin Home. Great Deals could be a sub board under Marketplace, they are both about buying and selling.
😛 Battlefield, COD, and CS:S don’t really need a board in my opinion, they would look better as sub boards for general gaming discussion. Music, Tv Shows, and Music could be merged and called Entertainment with youtube videos as a sub board. PC build suggestions and overclocking don’t need their own boards either, and would work better as a sub board for technology. I’m not sure why you have a GFX category on a gaming forum. You should stick to the one subject and do it well. I would merge the 3 into one and call it Creativity, poems, stories and that kind of thing could go in there as well. Or you could merge them and call it GFX, it doesn’t really matter.
😛 Other than this, your layout looks pretty good.
😀
(Scored 12/20)
Statistics and Activity
You reopened in July 2011, and have since accumulated over 15000 posts in over 1700 threads. For being open 3 months, this is really good. It’s more than 1000 a week, which is amazing. I see you have 2000, a high number which shows you are dedicated to the forum. There’s not really much for me to say here, your activity is amazing and you are still growing.
(Scored 20/20)
Staff Moderation
I can not find a Staff Team page anywhere, but I can see 3 red names so I assume those 3 are the staff? Three staff member is a good amount for your forum, but as you continue to grow you may want to consider a 4th. You do seem to be doing a good job moderating though, I don;t see any spam anywhere. I apologise if you have more staff than I can see on the members online today list. As I mentioned above, you have 200 posts which is great, it shows you are dedicated. However the other 2 staff members only have around 300 which is not so great. You should encourage them to post around the forum a bit more. Also, there is no legend. I had to go into people’s profiles to find out their rank. I think it would look much better and easier for new members to have a legend, so they can quickly identify staff.
(Scored 16/20)
Spelling/Grammar & Professionalism
Your spelling and grammar looks pretty good, but your board descriptions not so much. The majority of them start with Discuss which seems boring and repetitive. They are all one sentence. You should work on making them more interesting and more details, maybe switch discuss to something else for a few of them. Try to get them all a minimum of 3 sentences in length, so that they clearly explain what goes where. Again, I don’t see any spelling mistakes which is great.
(Scored 16/20)
Total Score - 81/100
Final Remarks
Amazing start to your forum! I see you’ve been growing quite fast, and I wish you the best of luck for the future. I’m sure you will continue to grow if you stay dedicated
🙂
Strong Points
Your appearance, and activity.
Things to Improve
Your layout.
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