Your Forum Review
First Impressions & Appearance
When a potential user visits your forum, you want them to have fantastic first impressions. I wouldn't say my first impressions were fantastic, but they were quite well. There is always room for improvement though, and I will try my best to help you turn these "quite well" first impressions to fantastic first impressions. First of all, I like your logo. It's quite simple, but it's professional and sleek. The font just makes me think of the type of font I would see at a bay restaurant in real-life. I think it's a bit weird that your forum does not have any Pokemon on the logo, header, or anywhere in the theme. I think you should work on incorporating Pokemon into the forum's beautiful theme. Next, I feel you should have a favicon. A favicon is what shows up next to the bar where your forum's address is located in your browser. You should have a favicon that flows with your forum. You could have a Pokemon icon or sprite for it, or it would probably look best if you just had "UB" on it, but have it match the logo. Besides that, I really don't see too many improvements you could make. I love how the theme has a bit of orange in it, which is the color you may think of when you think of a bay. Overall, I had great first impressions. I think your forum deserves a round of applause for the appearance you have put upon your forum. Great work!
(Score: 19/20)
Site Layout
Your forum's layout is very nice. You have a simple layout, and everything is in its place. Your forum's layout isn't perfect of course. For instance, the menu doesn't match up well with the header; the header has a width of 100%, but the menu doesn't have a width of 100%. The menu has the same width as the actual forum width. Also, I think you should move the menu up so it is directly under the header; with no space in between, and the menu having a width of 100%. I think that would look much better, and it just makes sense for the blue header and the blue menu to flow together. I think it would look better (you would probably see more introduction topics as well) if you were to move the "Your Journey Begins!" board to the Oceanview Plaza, directly under the "Community Response Center" board. Finally, you could say that your forum has too many boards (twenty boards), but in your forum's case, I don't think so. Normally, I would say that you need to merge a few boards, but the members are keeping all the boards active, so it should be fine the way it is. Good luck improving your layout.
(Scored 19/20)
Statistics and Activity
As of right now, your forum has managed to accumulate 4,656 posts and 57 members. Those are pretty nice statistics. You say your forum in late March, closed, and then reopened with about 1,000 posts on July 22, 2011. I think you gave me the wrong reopening date, there's a thread on your forum about your forum being back and reopening, and it was made on June 23rd, 2011. So, I will assume that you just made a mistake with the reopening date and your forum actually reopened on June 22nd, 2011 instead of July 22nd, 2011. Either way, your forum has still accumulated some good statistics in a small amount of time. If what you say is correct, your forum has had three or four thousand posts made since the reopening which was about five or six weeks ago. That is excellent! Your forum's overall activity is great as well. Your forum seems to have a large amount of posts flowing in daily, that is fantastic. There's not much room for improvement, but you should try to get the thirty or forty members that haven't logged in lately to start being active; email reminders, contests, etc tend to work well.
(Scored 18/20)
Staff Moderation
According to the "Forum Team" page, your forum has a total of six staff members. There are three professors, who I can assume are technically administrators. Your forum is doing well, so two administrators is probably needed, but three administrators is a bit excessive and unnecessary. You should consider demoting one of the administrators to the assistant position or something. You have two assistants; I think they are basically global moderators. That is a fair amount of global moderators, I see no problem, but anymore would be excessive. That being said, f you demote one of the administrators to an assistant position, you should probably demote one of the other assistants to a regular moderator position as you only have one moderator anyways. That way you would have two professors, two assistants, and two moderators. Overall, the current staff team seems to be doing well moderating the forum. I don't see any issues that have not been taken care of. Good work, and I wish you the best of luck improving your staff team.
(Scored 15/20)
Spelling/Grammar & Professionalism
All the staff members appear to be posting with professionalism for the most part, but I see a lack of professionalism in some posts. For example, I see text-talk in many posts by staff members. There's nothing wrong with allowing text-talk on forums, but the staff members should try their best not to use text-talk as they influence others on the forum. If one staff member uses text-talk, there's a chance the whole forum will be using text-talk. You don't want all the posts to consist of text-talk and simply be low-quality posts really. So, I will point out a few spelling/grammar errors I spotted in the board descriptions, important topics, etc. First of all, I don't necessarily see any mistakes, but in "A Day At The Beach" board description, you said "just" three times. That may not sound like much, but it seems a bit repetitive when I read it. Secondly, in the "Beachside Marketplace" board description, it would sound better if you added "do" between "So," and "you." Thirdly, in that same board description, "skill" should probably be "skills." Fourthly, in the "Undella Bay Journeys" board description, it finishes with "this is the Journeys in Undella Bay." Grammatically correct, it should be "These are the Journeys in Undella Bay," or something close to that, depending on your preference. Finally, in the "Rules and Guidelines" topic, I spotted a few spelling errors. "Hacking discussion is promitted" should be "Hacking discussion is permitted." You seem to have not capitalized the word Pokemon a few times in the topic, and it should be capitalized. "Prohibitted" is incorrect spelling. It should be "prohibited." "Immediatly" is incorrect spelling. It should be "immediately." Overall, spelling and grammar needs a bit of work, but the board descriptions are wonderful. Good luck!
(Scored 14/20)
Total Score - 85/100
Final Remarks
Strong Points
Your forum's theme, logo, and activity.
Things to Improve
Your forum's spelling/grammar, favicon, and staff team.
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