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The Lovinity Community+
- Thread starter xanaftp
- Start date
Thank you for using the Forum Promotion review service. We have deducted 100 FP$ from your account in exchange for conducting a Basic Review. You can request another review on January 28th, 2017.
Thank you @Kaynil for all your help. I still haven't completed everything you've suggested yet because I'm trying to figure out what to do about the footer. I suppose I could place affiliate links on Arrowchat. I try to avoid arrowchat for any links because links only appear on desktop users, not mobile.
My pleasure. Don't worry about what can't be worked out of what I said. This is just a one person perspective, you might find someone later on with a completely different view so just give priority taking in what goes with your own ideas for the site. I'd say forget about my arrow chat suggestion.
I do agree the affiliations need to be smaller. I might convert them to using the banners system instead of catalogues like everything else on that page. Banners can expire automatically after some time, can be made smaller, and can also be responsive.
Thank you for the compliments. The niche is pretty small scale, I'll agree. But it's open for anyone who wishes to join, especially those seeking a support system or activist promotion.
Like the radio feature as well. Well the niche is currently not for me as I am kinda strange when it comes to dealing with though stuff. My brother recently passed and I dealt with it cold on the outside, but now i have to vent out, and well one has to vent out on his own so he does't bother anyone else. But I am sure I will join it in a few months.
I really enjoy the theme and that it has so many options, just wanna know what forum software is it? Or is the site made out of a custom them and the forum of a software?
Feel free to join when you wish. But we're very friendly when it comes to venting and even have a vent forum as well as a journaling section with privacy controls you can utilise. I'm sorry to hear about the loss of your brother though and hope things are alright for you and the family 🙁
The forum software is an unusual one called Composr CMS. However, I've made many custom modifications to the theme as well as added some custom functionality to my site that was not originally included with Composr.
Thanks but as said I am a bit of a strange guy, venting with poetry and basketball 😀 I shall join now and post later I think.
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On behalf of the team, I apologise for the long wait time and I thank you for your patience 🙂 Here is your review!
Number of Posts & Members:
So having a look at your levels of members and posts they actually are not too bad of a ratio considering the amount of members you have.
These statistics actually are not that bad but there are ways to improve them. Having a look at the niche of your forum I think it would be a great idea to possibly consider a social media outreach and have a look at engaging with members on various social medias; I know you said you have tried Facebook but Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and obviously Facebook are very popular and a good platform to target
Average
Activity Level:
One of the first thing that strikes me when having a look at the main forum of the Lovinity Community is that there is a really low level of activity around the forum. Having a look at some forums I can see a distinct lack of posts and threads in that area, for example the Topic Of The Week forum only has three threads when the forum has been open for a lot longer than three weeks 😛 Then you have a look at some other forums like the General Discussion one and you see an alright level of topics and a higher level of posts. I think one of the main problems of the community is that there is limited content to reply to- Me as a member tend to reply to content instead of creating it, this is just the way I am; If there is few content to reply to, once I have replied to a few I'll start to get bored and move on from that forum. Another issue I saw is the spreading out of posts and the time frame they have been made in- Some forums have posts from Yesterday while some are from January. The time of posts are very important, when I initially look to join a community I see how active each section of the forum is, I don't mind a few weeks but a few months is really offputting and may result in me not signing up. You as the owner should be creating high levels of content alongside advertising Lovinity to try and get more members and activity because if you don't care and don't have the will to try and create content, what chance do your members have? Activity can easily be appeared to look high which will certainly draw some new users in and that's what Lovinity needs to grow and develop further.
Poor
Thing you liked best about forum: Lovinity is a very unique and quirky community which utilises images and graphics very effectively to style the site in a very different way which works really well. This is one of my favourite things about the community! 🙂
Thing you liked least about forum: Activity levels seem to be really low and you as the owner could certainly try and do more around the community to ensure these levels go up. Apart from that there isn't much to pick fault with, great job 🙂
Basic Re-Review of
The Lovinity Community
http://lovinity.org
Review by Myers
The Lovinity Community
http://lovinity.org
Review by Myers
So having a look at your levels of members and posts they actually are not too bad of a ratio considering the amount of members you have.
These statistics actually are not that bad but there are ways to improve them. Having a look at the niche of your forum I think it would be a great idea to possibly consider a social media outreach and have a look at engaging with members on various social medias; I know you said you have tried Facebook but Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and obviously Facebook are very popular and a good platform to target
- Social Media- Consider creating official Social Media accounts and advertise some features of your community that may engage with people- Try sharing it and getting your friends to do the same, post in interest groups for your niche and post in chats/chatrooms/messages in casual conversation to try and get members to signup
- Youtube is an excellent site! Create promotional videos and brief films of your site adding effects and animations to make it appeal to people! You'll be surprised how many people look at your profile when you simply comment on a video and it is a great way to get yourself out there on a platform used by a billion if not more people day in day out
- Referral systems are a great way to get users to refer other members to your site! Adding this system with a reward for those who referrer people is a great idea and people will use it! Setup say a group that after one referral they get added to which say lets them change their username for free or something else like that.
- Competitions to try and gain the support of your users is something else you can do. Try and run competitions with prizes (They don't have to be just PayPal cash or giftcards, creative things work just as well) People would take part in these and it can increase levels of both activity but also engagement of users creating more activity which appeals for people to signup.
Average
One of the first thing that strikes me when having a look at the main forum of the Lovinity Community is that there is a really low level of activity around the forum. Having a look at some forums I can see a distinct lack of posts and threads in that area, for example the Topic Of The Week forum only has three threads when the forum has been open for a lot longer than three weeks 😛 Then you have a look at some other forums like the General Discussion one and you see an alright level of topics and a higher level of posts. I think one of the main problems of the community is that there is limited content to reply to- Me as a member tend to reply to content instead of creating it, this is just the way I am; If there is few content to reply to, once I have replied to a few I'll start to get bored and move on from that forum. Another issue I saw is the spreading out of posts and the time frame they have been made in- Some forums have posts from Yesterday while some are from January. The time of posts are very important, when I initially look to join a community I see how active each section of the forum is, I don't mind a few weeks but a few months is really offputting and may result in me not signing up. You as the owner should be creating high levels of content alongside advertising Lovinity to try and get more members and activity because if you don't care and don't have the will to try and create content, what chance do your members have? Activity can easily be appeared to look high which will certainly draw some new users in and that's what Lovinity needs to grow and develop further.
Poor
Thing you liked best about forum: Lovinity is a very unique and quirky community which utilises images and graphics very effectively to style the site in a very different way which works really well. This is one of my favourite things about the community! 🙂
Thing you liked least about forum: Activity levels seem to be really low and you as the owner could certainly try and do more around the community to ensure these levels go up. Apart from that there isn't much to pick fault with, great job 🙂
Overall Mark:
Lovinity is a really creative and unique forum that has the absolute potential to excel and do extremely well in its niche! With the few suggestions given today about picking up activity, Lovinity can become a really great community! I wish you all the best of luck with this amazing forum 🙂
Lovinity is a really creative and unique forum that has the absolute potential to excel and do extremely well in its niche! With the few suggestions given today about picking up activity, Lovinity can become a really great community! I wish you all the best of luck with this amazing forum 🙂
Thank you for the review @Myers
Actually, this is the re re-review 😛
The problem I face is that I lack networks. I have very few connections in the social media realm, and I lack the confidence to really put a lot of effort into making new connections (mainly because I'm very "different" from a lot of people and therefore don't easily make friends, even online... therefore if someone expects me to be able to grow my network, they're in for disappoint).
I've sadly tried this multiple times. My current users all feel like there really isn't anywhere they can promote where people would actually be interested. Therefore, this idea never works.
I wish. I really wish. But I'm insecure about Youtube for a number of reasons. First off, the community is highly critical. If I, as a non-popular YouTuber, want any chance of making videos that get more likes than dislikes, I will have to invest in costly software and put a bunch of time and effort into making them. That is unfortunately outside of my budget and my time. Secondly, I don't like YouTube's business model. It is extremely strict (and unfair) on copyright policies and on community guidelines (which are pretty much community moderated with little to no actual trained professional intervention). Do you have any suggestions?
This is by design actually. Topics in the "topics of the week" get moved after a week to their appropriate forums while new topics get made for the topics of the week. But because you didn't pick up on that, there's obviously something wrong with this system. So I would like to know what your thoughts are on how I could improve this.
Here's where the next challenge is. I can create content, no problem. But can I create "high level / quality" content? No. I cannot compete with a lot of the bloggers online. Why? I don't know honestly. I guess I'm intellectually disabled in that aspect. I have never been able to create high quality content without shelling out several hours of time I do not have. And even when I do manage to do so, it ends up failing in many different ways because I'm not good at convincing people, arguing points, nor portraying a need or desire for others to care about what I write. And thus I end up lacking motivation to put any more than small amounts of effort in generating content. That's why i mainly stick to simply creating topics that present a story from another website and then asking discussion questions about said story. I don't have to try and argue any points or convince people. It doesn't take a lot of time. And it generates something people can talk about. Thoughts? Suggestions?
Actually, this is the re re-review 😛
The problem I face is that I lack networks. I have very few connections in the social media realm, and I lack the confidence to really put a lot of effort into making new connections (mainly because I'm very "different" from a lot of people and therefore don't easily make friends, even online... therefore if someone expects me to be able to grow my network, they're in for disappoint).
I've sadly tried this multiple times. My current users all feel like there really isn't anywhere they can promote where people would actually be interested. Therefore, this idea never works.
I wish. I really wish. But I'm insecure about Youtube for a number of reasons. First off, the community is highly critical. If I, as a non-popular YouTuber, want any chance of making videos that get more likes than dislikes, I will have to invest in costly software and put a bunch of time and effort into making them. That is unfortunately outside of my budget and my time. Secondly, I don't like YouTube's business model. It is extremely strict (and unfair) on copyright policies and on community guidelines (which are pretty much community moderated with little to no actual trained professional intervention). Do you have any suggestions?
This is by design actually. Topics in the "topics of the week" get moved after a week to their appropriate forums while new topics get made for the topics of the week. But because you didn't pick up on that, there's obviously something wrong with this system. So I would like to know what your thoughts are on how I could improve this.
Here's where the next challenge is. I can create content, no problem. But can I create "high level / quality" content? No. I cannot compete with a lot of the bloggers online. Why? I don't know honestly. I guess I'm intellectually disabled in that aspect. I have never been able to create high quality content without shelling out several hours of time I do not have. And even when I do manage to do so, it ends up failing in many different ways because I'm not good at convincing people, arguing points, nor portraying a need or desire for others to care about what I write. And thus I end up lacking motivation to put any more than small amounts of effort in generating content. That's why i mainly stick to simply creating topics that present a story from another website and then asking discussion questions about said story. I don't have to try and argue any points or convince people. It doesn't take a lot of time. And it generates something people can talk about. Thoughts? Suggestions?
J A X ' S R E V I E W
Unofficial Review By Jax
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FIRST IMPRESSIONS
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When I first visited your site, I noticed that everything has a slight opacity, this was to show the Black History image in the background. Truthfully I think it's a little tacky, you want people to see the content on the site. I would really consider having a banner for the event rather than changing the entire design to suit it.FIRST IMPRESSIONS
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The design feels old, and it doesn't tell me what the site is about as soon as start looking around it isn't until I have viewed the entire page before I knew what I was looking at. Overall I feel your community is somewhat active with the latest post to be made yesterday. You have some great topics that covers a different perspective and that something I love about your site.
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DESIGN
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I feel that the icons used for each area is great but I would expect to go to a full-width page rather than a small pop out window for content. The website looks good, but could look much better with the use of solid colours and the removal of an image background. I would add a hero banner to your front page, this is a full-width image. (http://therenovatorhq.com.au/)
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SUMMARY
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In conclusion, you do have a good forum, it has content there and doesn't have empty boards, these are all good things. As @Bluezone777 has said, Content is King and community is queen, and your site definitely has that.
The idea of having a radio is good, however, I couldn't get it to work. The layout to me was a little cluttered and was trying to tell me too much and that had a negative effect on my user experience. I do understand that you maybe using php software which uses a lot of tables in its design and I would recommend in that case to use HTML and CSS. I do wish you all the best with your forum.
Unfortunately Composr CMS' philosophy does not revolve around modern design fads, such as heavy use of Javascript/AJAX and animations. If they went that route, the modularity of the template engine would be lost and made extremely complicated and perhaps very buggy too. They stick to what works and what has been effective, which has the unfortunate caveat of making it look old. I did remove some of the bevel, gradients, and rounded corners though (but a few creeped their way back in the CSS so I will need to fix that). And I do not use most of the default icons.
I'm probably not going to go the banner route. I don't see that as practical because the background is not an event promotion... it's just a background. However, I'll think about the design and the opacity versus non-opacity.
I'm surprised by this. Did you look at the front page as a guest user... https://www.lovinity.org ? It should be obvious on that page by presenting you a welcome and then a headline reading "We provide a safe activist social network and support system for everyone." It then goes on with a call to action button to register or log in, and then to explain the common problems with other social networks, and how we work around those problems. It also explains our services/solutions. But the short one-sentence headline that I stated is above the fold (except on some mobile browsers unfortunately) and concisely explains what the website is about. So, I'm confused as to what you mean by it not telling you what the site is about as soon as you start looking around.
This is intentional. Myself and a couple other members on the website are very light sensitive. Websites with a lot of white or bright colors gives us headaches. So I intentionally limit the amount of brightness on the website (I didn't want to use a dark theme because that doesn't give the right impression of the website IMO)... and I try to stick to color schemes that have 50% or less saturation (I recently used a 100% saturation colour, though it wasn't bright or anything, and got a complaint saying it was too much. So I stick to 50% or less saturation.).
However, I'm curious as to what you meant by the colour scheme needing work. Could you be more specific please?
Again, I'm not sure how to make it any shorter without leaving out vital information. Suggestions?
I'm sorry, but doing this would require many hours of work on my end which I cannot afford to invest in unless some income was generated from it. You need to remember this is a non-profit website. I make no money from this community, and rarely do I receive any donations. The caveat is that because of that, I have to limit how much I invest in the website in terms of time, effort, and money. The design aspect of the website would take many hours of hard work that I cannot afford to give without getting some sort of income from it. And I do not have the financial resources to pass such a huge task off to a designer. Therefore, I likely will not change the design. Composr again sticks to what has worked, not what is trending. And though I really do enjoy trending designs myself, I don't plan to use them because it's too much work, would deprecate a lot of Composr's built in template flexibility, and trending designs frequently bug and do things it shouldn't.
However, Composr is working on a full-width theme that will be fully responsive. This will not be released until their next major version of the software though. So until that time, my website is stuck on fixed width for desktop users. I did try to implement the wide width theme into the current version, but quickly realized that was a feat beyond my reasonable limits that I can invest in the website as stated before. So I abandoned that idea.
I see your point. But if it went full width, you wouldn't be able to "click out of" the overlay window; you'd be forced to always click the little X at the top right corner. Not only that, but if it were full width, from a UI perspective it would be less obvious it's an overlay... it'd look more like a completely separate page. I'll consider the suggestion, but I doubt I'll implement it.
This is not something my members want (I asked them about this before). They like the various background images I use for the website because it gives the website a nice fresh feel for them every week. So I do not plan to remove the background image and stick to just solid colours. But I do plan to figure out ways in which I can use the background images without having to transfer so much data. Though, this isn't a big priority because mobile devices don't get the background image... and once the wide width theme comes out, that will unfortunately kill the ability to use background images. So right now I'm using them and enjoying them while I can 😛
I've tried this before, but given it is outside of Composr's design philosophy, it bugged up the page and increased the amount of data needed to transfer. So I opted not to use them anymore for now. And again, full width is not possible with a fixed width theme.
Hmm... when you say "couldn't get it to work", what were you trying to do?
I understand. I think it's cluttered too, and I've been trying to think of ways to fix this. But the HTTP disclaimer and the disclaimer that we do not review the content of the programming are both necessary. Perhaps I'll think of a way to better present the page and make the disclaimers shorter. The now playing part of the page though unfortunately is hard to work with. Because the radio system runs on a different server (it is impossible to run it on the same server as the website), it has to have its own local webserver to serve the now playing data, track request system, and so on. I tried serving those locally on the website's server, but connections to the radio system kept failing because of security policies and whatnot. So I have to serve the radio system pages from the radio computer and iframe them into the website.
I am rather confused by this statement. PHP is not a front end language. It alone has nothing to do with the way content is presented on the website. It has the power to dictate how content is displayed via HTML and CSS, but PHP alone does not have any designing functionality of its own. The design portion is all HTML and CSS, even though PHP does dictate what HTML and CSS to use via Composr's templating engine. And unfortunately, it is impossible to go to strictly HTML and CSS with no PHP dictation because then that will break a ton of Composr functionality, including the templating engine.
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Despite the many discrepancies, I appreciate your honest review. Even though there's unfortunately not a lot I can do to remedy some of the things you suggest, it does get me thinking.
Please don't take my suggestions to heart, your site is good. I would now look at ways around completing some of these updates. a lot of the stuff mentioned can be done using CSS. it is complicated and hard work but belive me it will tully benofit you and your site
Thanks @Jax for the encouragement. But the unfortunate reality is that many of these updates are not feasible. As I said, the website is non-profit. In order for me to be able to invest the amount of time and effort required to complete some of these updates, I would need to be paid for it because it would take a lot of time away from my independent contractor work. And that's just not going to happen because the website is way too small scale for anyone to be willing to invest in it like that.
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