Your Forum Review
First Impressions & Appearance - (Out of 20)
As soon as I open your forum, I see this blue and black background glaring at me. The blue and dark blue checkers do not work very well together, they look as though they are pushing away from each other, into the other ones and then trying to push away from them. The gradient on them really I do not think is necessary, it adds to the glare. Maybe changing the dark blue to maybe a dark grey or maybe even black would make it look much better, and also removing the gradient would do so even more.
I really like the banner you have, the gloss underneath makes it stand out a lot more, and the different colours of the characters really blend in to make it seem as though they were meant to be together. Just underneath that, I like your menu buttons. Having the register button really stand out is a good idea. It will entice the potential member to click it, thus giving you another member. Your new/old post icons match your theme and site very well, the grey and blue blend in very well with the text beside it and the colour scheme of your theme. But on that note, the Ad's do fit in with the theme, but dont look good either way.
One major thing I saw in your forum, was that you were lacking in descriptions across the whole board. You need descriptions to describe what can be posted in the forum. Something short and sharp, maybe 2-3 lines or sentences that are descriptive will do the trick nicely.
(15 /20)
Site Layout - (Out of 20)
Looking at the bulk of your layout, it does not seem very organised. First of all, your first category is well organised, except for 1 thing. You have a whole forum for the rules, why not just make them a global announcement so everyone is reminded of them every time they check a forum. The 2nd category, well, to be honest, is not really needed. Adding the introductions under the store in the first category, and adding all about you as a sub forum under introductions, would make it more organised. Next up, the 3rd category is perfect where it is. Having the main subject of your forum up the top is a lot better than placing it down the bottom. However, I feel you could expand more on Sonic discussion. All you have are 3 forums, you could go into specific game sub-forums, specific character sub-forums, let users post about any fan made media they have made, maybe merging that last category into the 3rd one, without the Community Bin in it. With the 4th and 5th categories, maybe leaving the 4th category as it is, and then making a forum called gaming, which will house all the posts from the General Gaming forum, and then have sub-forums for Sega, Nintendo etc. I also think having the Community Bin in the staff category, if you have one, so people cant see any spam.
(14 /20)
Statistics and Activity - (Out of 20)
Lets see, you have been opened for around 448 days, have roughly 58 and a half thousand posts, and 364 registered users. Lets break this down:
Posts per Day: around 130
Posts per Member: around 160
Members per Day: around .8
Looking at these stats, your posts per day are great for a forum that many days old. Many forums can get up to 130 in around a year, but this drops off straight afterwards. Keeping that static up like it is should lead your forum to success. A sign of an active userbase is having a whopping 160 posts per user on average. This shows you are converting your members after registration into active posters, which is a very good sign. .8 members per day is also a great stat, many forums may only achieve 2 per week, so yours is quite good.
(20 /20)
Staff Moderation - (Out of 20)
OK, lets break down the moderation stats:
Number of Admins: 4
Number of Moderators: 4
Total: 8
Staff:User Ratio : 1:44.5
Staff
😛ost Ratio: 1:7,312.5
Now, I have mixed reactions to your team. All up you have 8 staff members. Your member ratio, is a bit 50:50 for me. It is good that you have a lot of staff to moderate such an active userbase, but for a forum that old, really having maybe 6 members of staff is necessary. If you really feel that the Moderator's have done well, and are very active, then by all means keep them. But what I dont feel looks good, is the users that have been on in the last 24 hours. Currently, Maybe 1 third to 1 half of the users that have been on in the last 24 hours are moderating staff, with maybe another 1 eighth being other members of staff. Some potential users maybe see this a bit intimidating. Overall, your team is a bit large, but if they are really helpful, they may be a good asset to your forum when it reaches over 100k posts.
(17 /20)
Spelling/Grammar & Professionalism - (Out of 20)
As mentioned earlier, this section of the review may be a little hard consider I dont have much in the way of descriptions to look for any mistakes. One little error I saw with your forum was the you had SEGA, changing that to Sega would make it look a lot better. Other than that, you show good Grammar and Spelling.
(19 /20)
Total Score - 90 (Out of 100)
Final Remarks:
Your forum is doing well, keep it up
What was most liked about the website/forums:
The activity you are getting
What was disliked most about the website/forums:
The squres behind the theme, the lack of description
How could I get you (The Reviewer) to join my website?
I dont like Sonic, sorry.
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