I apologise for the 24hr delay on the review being completed. The timezone difference coupled with ongoing reviews hindered your wait time slightly. Thank you once again for your patience and cooperation 🙂
First Impressions:
One of the first things that struck me when visiting your site, was the information and joining notice put up to your forums guests. I was pleased with the simplistic menu bar, presenting all the main features of the site which allowed me to quickly navigate to various pages of your site. The additional Quick Link tabs that popped up (Despite being a bit laggy) provided even more pages/areas to visit and again, made it extremely easy to navigate around Ninja RP. Having a look at the main body of the site, I was presented with a very modern, simplistic, colourful and generally aesthetically-pleasing theme which suited the niche and atmosphere of the site very well in my opinion (More on this a bit later) Directing my attention to the Footer of your forums, I noticed again, a splendid mix of colours which complemented the various Social Media's nicely, a variety of links to Social Media's and Forum's where you have advertised (Enhancing user's usage of the site through other platforms, such as Twitter, that we use everyday, and a variety of Quick Navigation links, so even if you are in the footer, you are able to quickly navigate to the pages/areas you need to visit with much ease. The only disappointing area for me initially is the Logo which appeared like it has been created with a text software like: CoolText, Microsoft Word or another logo maker. Apart from that, I can certainly say that my First Impressions of The Ninja RP Forums, were very good and as a guest, I would certainly be intrigued to sign up and join in with the fun!
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First Impressions Grade: Good
Design Quality:
This is personally my favourite of the two themes available to your site users. I liked the use of different colours throughout, Purple as the main one, but also other colouring applicable to the various Social Media Platforms you have displayed in the footer, and some image used across the site also. I liked the background image of the forum, and the fact that it changes provides a bit of variety for frequent visitors of the site. Starting from the top down, the first bit of the page presented without scrolling down is the navigational bar, logo and Guest's- Sign up now banner. Having a look at the logo it striked to me as a little bit out of place, and a bit generic and generated, than customly handmade; Given the high amount of logo makers out there, such as CoolText, Microsoft Wordart and a few others, it striked me as being made in one of these, rather than crafted with care by a professional. That said, it suits the colours of the site well (Purple and light pinkish) but in my opinion, could be improved further. Having a quick scroll over the Navigational Bar, I noticed "Quick Links" were presented to the user on a couple of segments however at times, when transitioning from one menu option to another, it did appear as a bit laggy; This isn't the most majorist of concerns and doesn't take ages and ages to appear but it can be a bit hindering if your in a rush
😛 Moving onto the Guest Banner, I've always liked the idea of presenting guests with a banner to try and give them the option to sign up right away, and the styling, positioning and text on yours, I feel, is perfect and a really clever technique you've used to engage with guests and get them to become active members. The overall forum, with your theme, is a perfect match and to me presents your forum well. Overall, with a few improvements, I can say this is a really solid and professional theme for your forum, and one I liked very much
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Overall Design:
The favicon of your site, which is a blurry image of a character, isn't the most effective favicon acaliable to guests. A more simplistic (and theme matching) favicion would make this a more effective medium to display the site's title and improve the overall image of the site to those who have an advanced level of technological skill. I liked the dynamic title, which flashes to display when your chatbox recieves a new message, and to me, is also an effective design feature of your site. Overall, I really liked both themes (Though Dark Decimation gets my favourite vote
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Design Quality Grade: Good
Thing you liked best about forum: The design, especially the multi-colouring technique used throughout which really gave a nice, modern and friendly feel for your guests.
Thing you liked least about forum: The logo, given the otherwise Excellent quality of the theme, looked a little bit simple and like a CoolText graphic.
Overall Mark:
Overall, I can say that The Ninja RP Forums, is certainly off to an amazing start already. With a few more areas improved (Such as Activity Levels, A higher quality logo and a few other areas which I have highlighted throughout) I can defiantly say that your forum can defiantly become one of the largest Roleplaying forums around, and I wish you all the best of luck in the future, it is certainly a very bright one
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