Your Forum Review
First Impressions & Appearance - (Out of 20)
Firstly, I would recommend that you get a favicon. Not the default forumotion one. When a user bookmarks your website, you want them to see something that stand out a little - i.e. a custom favicon. While I'm up in that section of the forum, I would also like to recommend that you remove the "free forum:" from the forum title. No one needs to know (or frankly, cares) that your forum is on a free forum. Also, for people with a lot of tabs open it could just come up as "free forum" or something like that.
You should get a custom banner. You're not Forumotion - you're the Ultimate team forum! So there's no reason that you should have a Forumotion banner.
I think you should get rid of the portal. It's annoying, and most people just like to skip straight to the content. Barely any will actually look at the portal. Also, if they wanted to read the announcements they could just go to the announcement forum.
The forum header background and the category table colors are two different shades of red - that makes the forum look sloppy and unsymmetrical. You want to maintain a certain level of symmetry in the forums appearance.
The theme itself looks really default in general. Kind of old too with the completely straight block forum category boarders and such (and the red could be hurting peoples eyes -- especially those who have really bright monitors) - I would recommend that you go to hitskin.com and pick out a nice theme, make your own banner and favicon (or request/get a banner and favicon).
(Scored 2/20)
Site Layout - (Out of 20)
think you should split the categories on index and don't have the sub forums showing. Right now the forum index is really hard to navigate, and sloppy in general. You should separate the forums into different categories (maybe three or four) and make it so that only the sub forum titles are showing. No the entire forum itself.
(Scored 2/20)
Statistics and Activity - (Out of 20)
Actually, the activity doesn't look too bad from a glance. There are four users online as I type this, and there's at least one topic in every forum. That's really good. Of course, I would suggest that you request posting packages, invite your friends, do post exchanges, ect. with others so that the forums with only one or two posts in them can get more.
158 users in around three weeks is really good too. Congratulations on that, and whatever you did to get that amount in such a short time -- keep doing it.
(Scored 13/20)
Staff Moderation - (Out of 20)
You currently have five moderators/administrators. That's good for a new forum. It wouldn't really matter if you had one more or one less of those though. My personal opinion is that you should wait to get another staff member until you gain more activity (if you were thinking of hiring another staff member).
Though I do see that all of your staff except yourself have under 20 posts? That's not good. Staff are supposed to get an example -- so if the staff are not active, and they're the ones setting an example for the members..how can you expect the members to be active? I would tell them to be a bit more active in the community if I were you.
(Scored 10/20)
Spelling/Grammar & Professionalism - (Out of 20)
Here are the mistakes I found in the index -
"Post improvements, you would like to see on this forum."
Remove the comma.
"Look here often for deals, and freebies! "
Remove the comma.
"Had any great 59th minute deals lately? Post them here!..."
I don't see any reason for the "..." to be at the end -- I would say to remove it.
"Talk about your favourite soaps, games, football teams, etc!...."
I don't see any reason for the "...." to be at the end -- I would say to remove it.
"Want to host a giveaway? Post here!...."
I don't see any reason for the "...." to be at the end -- I would say to remove it.
"If you wish to host a pack game, a betting shop, or anything else create a thread and get going!"
I would rephrase that to - "If you wish to host a pack game, a betting shop, or anything else, then create a thread here and get going!"
"Chat about the latest TOTW's, who should be included in the TOTW, and anything else regarding TOTW.
🙂"
I think you should remove the smile face at the end -- you have two other forums with smile faces at the end, and too many smile faces in the forum descriptions can make it look kind of childish.
I did not find any spelling or grammar mistakes in the rules or important threads though -- good job with that. I also really liked how you kept the rules short and simple.
(Scored 5/20)
Total Score - 32
Final Remarks:
What was most liked about the website/forums: The activity.
What was disliked most about the website/forums: The look of it.
How could I get you (The Reviewer) to join my website? Make a few edits to the look of it.
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