Large Forum Review
First Impressions
As I swapped to your VisualFX light theme the first impressions will be based on that.
Looking at my last review, I can see that I made a comment about one of your themes, which turned me off due to the colours and general look of it. The current theme is one that clearly reverses my mind-set is one that is very welcoming to a new member. Bright and full of colour instead of dark and dull. There is one error I’ve noticed however; we’ll go into that in the appearance section.
As a new member, you like to see discussion and lots of it so that you can immerse yourself straightaway within the community you’ve joined and it is plain to see that on your forum there is enough discussion for me to get my head down and enjoy the community. Naturally, displaying the fact of your recent 10K post milestone atop the forum is also a great thing to do for new members. Of course though, you can’t leave that up there all the time!
With a quick glance over the forum page I feel that nothing has changed since the last time in terms of sections. A decent amount of boards/sections, which again do not intimidate the user too much but makes, it feel homely.
Overall though, a good first impression if I were a new user. I feel that maybe having a few more posts in the more graphical areas rather than the General areas would give the user the impression that a lot of the users do actually come here for graphics but I’m sure they do anyway. It’s nothing to harp on about!
(Score: 14/15)
Appearance
So, onto the appearance area which was a hot topic last time. Let’s see how these new themes fair for you in my mind, shall we?
So, I’ll start off with your VisualFX Light theme that I am currently using. I have to say just from first impressions I can tell a lot of work when into this one and it certainly I much, much more bright than the last one. The dark elements that you do have really do help to bring out the lighter side of things.
Your current logo is exactly the kind of logo I like on a graphic forum, and in general! Colourful and really signals what your forum is all about which is what a logo should do. I also like the placement of it, as it is the first thing that anybody loading the page would see.
So, you may remember in the ‘First Impression’ section I spoke about an error I noticed. (Note, this isn’t the error you have reported in your “We did it!” thread.) At first, I thought it was just my browser (Chrome) so I tried it in Firefox and got the same result. The error I am referring to is this (
http://i.imgur.com/dBH9i.png) which is where the three menu items you have are off centre (At least to myself) This may be a design thing you have implemented but to me it would suit the theme more to be centred (Just above where it says “VisualFX Announcements”) I am telling you this as for myself, it is always little errors than can detract from a very good theme. For reference, my resolution is 2560 x 1440 incase you need to know.
Another mini error that I noticed is a strange one. Again, this happened on both FF and Chrome. As I load the page I get this
http://i.imgur.com/Q3wr5.png and then it quickly swaps back to the three options instead of those five. It only stayed momentarily though but just to let you know.
I’ve noticed that you have added a nice little divider between posts, which although a very simple thing, can help a lot with some people. Good to see my suggestion was implemented there, haha.
Overall, VisualFX Light is a very good theme that you should be proud of. So, lets move on to VisualFX Universe!
So, on first thoughts I can deduce that this is a theme for those that like darkness. Like the last theme though, the mixture between light and dark really compliment each other and bring out each other’s elements well.
The logo is again, very well done and shows the level of graphical quality that your forum has to offer to users. The colours work fantastically well with one another and you have those dividers that yet again are an awesome option to include.
Strangely enough though, I like how the section title links that you can click to go back to the homepage or section thread area are in the centre. They just feel right placed there.
I can see no errors with this theme so that’s all I have to say on this one. Over your themes and logos are fantastic with some minor errors that I’ve pointed out. The only thing I say needs changing is your Favicon which is reminiscent of the old themes and I feel should be changed in lieu of reaching your goals and new themes but that’s up to you!
(Score: 19/20)
Statistics and Activity
So, by my calculations, you’ve been running for around 53 days and I don’t need to tell you that you have some very healthy stats for a forum of that age. Even last time your stats were very impressive for your age but it seems your forums been on overdrive. At the time of writing you have
10,284 posts and
104 members. I don’t really need to tell you it take some forums years to get to that level so fantastic job on this one, you’re doing something right!
Between the staff and your members, they make around
194 posts per day. I looked at the last review and re-done calculations taking into account your 6th start date this time, and you averaged 239 posts per day back then. Naturally, you have dropped but that is to be expected as more and more people join your forum.
Taking out staff posts though (which equate to
5,425 posts between them) the members of your forum make approximately
91 posts per day which is still fantastic. You obviously have a very strong member base. It is nice though to see that the staff are actively contributing the development of the forum by posting although, I would like to see ‘Seth’ post a little bit more but I am assuming he is new to the staff team due to the ‘promotion’ topic you have archived which ended on the 18th. This won’t deduct from your score though, just a little notice!
As I mentioned last time though, you had 25% of your forums total posts in the General sections of the site. This time around it makes up for 4.5K total posts on your forum. This is almost half your total amount of posts! I realise that one cannot stop people posting in the General sections but I really would like to see more members posting in the graphical areas, as it is a graphical forum after all. Another product of growth though I suppose!
(Score: 18/20)
Ratios
Not much has changed here since last time. You still have 14 boards within 4 sections (Which excludes the sub-boards), which is still decent enough for a forum of your size. They are all still placed correctly and you have more than enough staff to moderate over the sections at hand.
I don’t have any recommendations for this area.
(Score: 10/10)
Content
Again, this section is where I look over all your official stuff such as rules, announcements and the like.
First off though, I start with an apology. On the last review I mentioned a change in your rules thread that on further contemplation as I write this, doesn’t actually seem ‘correct’ as much. If possible, I’d like to tell you what I think it should be and don’t worry, this won’t reflect in the score as its my fault!
Here at VisualFX we want to keep the community clean, and to maintain a fun a environment for everyone! To keep this goal, we have just a few, simple rules to follow around the community. We are a pretty laid back forum, if you follow these rules, and always have a good attitude.
Here at VisualFX, we want to keep the community clean so that we can maintain a fun environment for everyone! To keep this goal though, we have just a few, simple rules for you to follow. We’re a pretty laid back forum so if you follow these rules and keep a good attitude, we’ll get on fine!
The bold part is what I think it should be. Obviously I put some bits in there that are not ‘professional’ per se but I’m not a professional person it’s just a matter of opinion there. I hope you get the general thing I’m trying to portray though.
Nothing really to comment on here though as your announcements and stuff are all written professionally and are linguistically sound. There are a few personal gripes that I’ve seen but nothing that affects anything. The same goes for your board descriptions, good job.
Although, looking at your board endings you seem to have a large amount which end in “!”. Whilst of course, that is fine I just feel that maybe you should be a little bit more consistent and either use them in every description or not at all. I appreciate that the exclamation mark may bring sections out to people but I am just a fan of consistency is all.
In VisualFX Market’s description I feel that the final segment should be “let our members request” instead of let members request. With regards to the bottom area of the forum where you display online user types such as Administrator and such, I feel that the titles should be capitalised. I realise that in your user title images you have lowercase letters but I feel that such ‘official’ positions are deserving of a capital letter for professionalisms sake.
In your ‘Community Feedback’ forum, I think that the stickied threads could be that bit more informative. Sure, threads like these (
http://visual-gfx.com/topic/7535569/1/) are self-explanatory but on most forums when I see such a thread they provide little examples just to get members thoughts flowing. Having such a broad, open first post just makes some people confused whilst examples could get them thinking. I noticed in that particular thread though, Nick commented with the sort of thing I meant. The other sticky thread that is for users to post which theme they are using. It invites them to post but it doesn’t invite to say why they are using that theme and what they like about it. You see the general area I’m pressing into hopefully.
Obviously, it is the ‘Feedback’ area of sorts, but as these are stickied threads I am looking at them. Just so you know.
(Score: 18/20)
Navigation
The same as last time in this section really. Your forum is very easy to navigate and using the search function is a breeze. Again though, the only thing I would like to see is a ‘Rules’ link in the nav-bar at the top of the forum for newer members.
It is easy for me to get back to the homepage of the site or back to a certain section area with the click of the button and that is what I like so there is nothing bad to say about your navigation. I can clearly see which member is in what group and who are the staff thanks to your staff page. Just maybe consider a rules page for newer members.
(Score: 14/15)
Total Score
93/100
Final Remarks
The forum has very much improved since I was last there that is a great thing to see. You are gaining more and more posts everyday with new members coming into a new and exciting graphics community. In fact, you’re so good you even nearly made it into the Forum Showcase, third time lucky maybe? Either way, you don’t need to be in the Forum Showcase for me to tell you that your forum Is onto great things in the future. A fantastic community in the making, good job.
After reading your review, please click here to rate your review.
