Large Forum Review
First Impressions
When I first loaded your forum, the first thing I noticed unfortunately wasn’t your logo or theme but the fact that the page loaded fairly slowly (In terms of the internet today) but as you are a ZB hosted forum, I can forgive that as it is really out of your hands I suppose.
Dismissing the above, the first thing I noticed was the bright colours in the header area of your forum. The leafy design in the background was welcoming and invited me to your forum in a sense. I then saw your ‘Featured Member’ box in the corner, which is fairly strange to say the least as its something I haven’t seen before. The logo is also a nice feature for your forum; the paw mark around the ‘O’ is great and shows your niche, as does the leaf.
Looking over the boards, as a new user I can see that you have a lot of discussion going on due to the post counts for each section. This shows activity to me, which for a new member is a very good welcoming feature.
Although, the novelty does tend to wear off soon after. The bright colours atop your forum are quickly diminished by the dark brown below it, it just doesn’t work and just looks like you thought, “To hell with it, let’s throw in a colour and fill the blank area up”. Not the impression you want to give out!
(Score: 13/15)
Appearance
Looking over your theme, there are some elements that I do like and some elements that I simply do not like. I’ve said in my first impressions that I like the bright colours you have in your header area and they do fit in nicely with your theme of what I’m assuming is the Earth and Animals. The paw mark in the logo and the leaf in the logo/background really do append to your sites area but whilst I can rummage a guess that the brown down the sides are representing ‘earth’ as in soil/manure type stuff, it really doesn’t fit with the earlier colours. I feel that a light grey infused with a light green or a leaf image would be much better than a brown filler down the side.
There is however, something else I’ve noticed. Where your logo/featured member is, it blocks out the leafy design and looks like you’ve loaded it on top of the backdrop purposely. I don’t know if this is a ZB thing or not, but I feel that you could move the logo to the right hand side within the leafy backdrop, as you could with the featured member. The links (Rules, Search etc) could then be moved into the green bar beneath the backdrop, which then gives the forum a cleaner layout in my opinion.
With regards to the boards and such like, they could also do with a little bit of re-modelling in my opinion. The board icons, which at the moment are a green orb with a leaf inside, could be changed. I personally think that maybe a paw with a claw line to indicate new posts and no claw lines to indicate no new posts could work. As with the posts the threads inside the section, I like how it is easy for me to distinguish between the different topics/posts. This is a good feature to have.
Other things you have include a favicon, which does a good job of representing your forums niche, as does your logo which clearly defines the two areas which your forum is there to represent.
(Score: 16/20)
Statistics and Activity
At the time of writing, your statistics read
11,618 posts and 56 members Looking at your start date, that seems very impressive before I even attempt to delve deeper into the statistics.
Looking at your board totals and such, I can see that the majority of posts on your forum are made in your actual forum niche areas, which is always a pleasure to see.
Usually in this part, I will look at the staff of a forum and their activity but as it seems you are the only one, you make my life easier! As I am looking at your profile, I can see that you have 2,820 posts, which is roughly ¼ of your forums total posts. I have to say, considering your forums start date I expected you to have a higher total of posts but considering the amount of input post wise you have from your members, I don’t have to mention that. You are doing fantastic in relation to keeping conversation flowing on the forum and interacting with the community.
Looking at your members, minus your total posts your members between them have made 8,798 posts that equates to 159 posts per member. For a new forum, this is fantastic stats and certainly sows that you are doing something right to gain this level of activity so soon. Brilliant job!
(Score: 20/20)
Ratios
Looking over your boards, I can see that you have 9 boards within 3 different sections, which for a forum of your age and activity is just right. Most newer forums fall into the trap of adding section after section either to attempt to appease members or to look more ‘awesome’ I suppose. I am glad you haven’t fallen into this trap.
With regards to your board themselves though, they all fit perfectly within their allotted sections and all seem to be named appropriately. Although, I do have my reservations on a personal level. The section titles, such as “Lobby” and “GeoZoo Discussion”, I think could be changed slightly. For example, the first section, which is currently called ‘Lobby’, could be called ‘The Front Desk’ and ‘Lobby’ can be moved to the third section which is called ‘Not so GeoZoo Discussion’. I just think it fits better, as would “Games Room” instead of “Game Room”. Again though, these are personal feelings of mine.
In terms of staff to members, I am quite surprised to see that you are the only staff member on your forum. For a forum of your size (Post wise) I would usually see a lot more staff, maybe another moderator or two. I do feel that maybe you could promote one of your senior members to a moderator just to help in case you’re ever not there. It’s just nice to have a pair of hands but you seem capable of handling things yourself!
(Score: 8/10)
Content
The first thing I do when I am reviewing within this section is look at your announcements and the replies you have posted in response to member queries and the like. As I go over your announcements I can see several things, both good and bad, which I am going to bring up.
The good thing is that your announcements are on the whole, explains what needs to be explained, which for members is a very good thing to do. What irks me slightly though is the lack of consistency throughout your announcements with regards to the length. I understand that obviously, not every subject can have an essay behind it but I feel that as an Administrator you should be writing announcements that show effort and passion for the community. Which for myself, is shown in the length of the reviews. For example, your ‘1k milestone” thread is simply a sentence going we’ve reached 1000 posts. That’s all well and good but where is the passion, the love for striving to reach even higher goals? You didn’t even seem that interested when you were writing about getting a domain at last! It is obvious that whilst you do care about the forum, I just don’t see it conveyed through your announcements. Many forums that I visit, I can see the passion for their forum within their announcements. I think you should work on that one.
As for the replies from yourself in response to your members are also very short and to the point. Such as
here Just a one word response is very irritable for most people, especially from an Admin. No short posts are in the rules for most forums yet in your rules I do not see it so you are not breaking your own rules but you are bordering on breaking essential web etiquette. On the subject of rules however, I like how your rules are set-up and written. They are coherent and clearly outline what is and isn’t expected of a member of your forum. Although, I would like to see a sticky topic with them in within your News section. This is just helpful for people.
Whilst trawling through your announcements and stuff, I have found several grammatical errors and consistent errors throughout your announcements. Such as in
this thread, you have “Nothing special to do for this”. To me, that doesn’t sound right when you say it. I think it should be something like. “You don’t have to do anything special for this, just do it like you would in a post!” It flows better rather than the stop-start sentences you have. Another thing I have noticed is you do tend to do unnecessary capitalization of words. Again, in the thread above you have a sentence which reads “This Month we have a Contest!” Just in those few words I can spot two words that don’t really need to be capitalized. I think you are simply trying to make those words stand out more but it is just not needed.
(Score: 8/20)
Navigation
In terms of navigation around your site, I find this to be a fairly good aspect of your site. From each thread or page I access it is easy for me to navigate back to the homepage or section I want to. This is a good aspect for any forum/site to have as it allows ease of use for the user.
I can see no problems with your forums navigation aside from the fact that the buttons used to navigate may be a bit on the small side for my own personal taste. By the way, on your ‘News’ page, the title of the page (The title that appears in the tab) says ‘news’ instead of ‘News’. Just a continuity error I noticed from all your other links that have capitalised beginnings.
(Score: 14/15)
Total Score
79/100
Final Remarks
A forum which for its age has very good statistics and nothing there which could be faulted. You are doing a very good job of moderating the forum on your own although I do feel that maybe you could benefit from an extra pair of hands just for a peace of mine more than anything. Some things could be changed to improve the forum in my opinion but overall, a good forum!
After reading your review, please click here to rate your review.
