Basic Review
Site Name: VisualFX
Site Type: Graphic Design
Age: 4 months 3 weeks
Appearance
Starting from the top, I think the banner is a great idea. It indirectly gives an impression of more serious graphic design, especially when the background is put together with the name of the forum. The favicon works good to explain 'visual'. I think the header, on the other side, is way too empty. You have blank black space to the right of the header, and an empty white bar at the top. These space can actually be used in various ways to give more insight to what your forum is. For example, the white bar can be used to display social network links (so you don't have to write one in announcement box and leave another picture set at the footer of the index page). The black space can be used to display winners of competitions, or some kind of welcome message to visitors with description of the forum and log-in and registration link.
For the index body, it looks neat. Great choice to make the background of category names different from one another. The forum icons are not very special, though; maybe you can tweak it by adding more unique images related to graphic designs, or using the eye you use for the favicon for example. Topic icons look pretty good, can use different effects to make the envelope/message icons to be more inviting. The rank images are bland although good, you can always customize with different fonts or images or effects. The achievement line looks out of place compared to other details; my suggestion would be to make a new box for achievement icons only so it will look tidier. Surely as a graphic design site you know better than me of improvisation.
There is nothing much at the bottom part, except that repeating social network icons. I don't think you need to put so much links to the social networks, twice, at the top and bottom, or refer to my suggestion previously. Credits and copyright are there too. Good job overall.
Layout
I have no problem with your forum's layout. I like how it emphasizes discussions on graphic designs by providing two categories, each with four sub-forums for it. You also don't overuse the general discussion sections and only provide what is needed. Great job there. 'VisualFX Market' is perhaps a bit misleading with the forum's name there, it implies that the market is for the forum in general while it is actually specific graphic-related. A change in name might be able to express the message clearly. Aside from that, nicely done with layout.
Statistics and Activity
By the time I was reviewing, VisualFX has 15,310 and 176 members. It roughly means 86 posts per member and around 800 posts per week; sounds great for a forum entering its fifth month soon. From those number, staff members posts reach around 46% of total posts. You have 42 members with no posts at all, and looking at the distribution of posts only some of the members have high post count compared to the others. You will have to work on how to raise members' attention and interest into posting to make the ratio grows bigger for members part. Activity is probably hard to exactly decide for a graphic design forum, but you can try contests with graphic-related prizes or fun features or regular quizzes.
Content
Forum name and address wise, it looks rather inconsistent to name your forum VisualFX with address visual-gfx. That, perhaps can be confusing, although it does explain about the niche of the forum which is about graphic design. Grammar wise, I don't see any problems. Looking at the rules and forum descriptions in general, staff members have tried their best to make quality posts with good grammar.
I noticed you run regular contests for signatures and avatars, it seems, but the winning pictures are not really displayed anywhere. You do leave links to winners at the top of the index page, but I think it would have been a better gift to actually display the pictures as well. You can use the top announcement box to advertise the next contests, while use the bottom of the forum or at the index body to display the works that won.
What you may need to work on more is also rate of new topics, especially in terms of discussion topics. I visited your general graphic discussion section and I saw only several names making new threads there lately, and most are made by staff members. Although the topics do receive several replies, this shows that members are more interested in reading or replying than starting a new one. Discussion sections can be a good place to explore post numbers and opportunities. Try a posting contest, or give special features for members who have posted particular number of topics.
Organization and SEO
I went to Google and Yahoo to search for 'VisualFX' but your forum came out as a result in second page. Your forum is displayed on fourth place at Google when I wrote 'Visual GFX' instead, and your DeviantArt account came in second place for both Google and Yahoo. However, for more common words like 'visual graphics', 'graphic design', 'visual design', and 'graphic showcase', your forum did not come out as a result. For Google Page Rank, you ranked 2/10. Alexa Traffic Rank is 2,659,437 with 38 sites linking back (though only two of them are actually related to graphic design). VisualFX also doesn't have a sitemap. Name might have something to do with this, but with such popular keywords there are many sites to result in so unless you have unique and popular content it would be hard to be found through search engines.
Words from the Reviewer
VisualFX has grown pretty fast and steady during these four months. While it is not easy at all to run, maintain, and make a graphic design forum grows (as shown with the number of competitors found through search engines search), if you can provide something unique which can't be found somewhere else you will be able to survive. You have the community, you have content going on currently, improve and explore more to raise visitors interest to join and be active on your forum.
Star Rating
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