Large Forum Review
First Impressions
The first thing I feel when I open up your forum is quite simply “Argh, too many things!”. Quite simply because there is a heck of a lot there for me to look at. I have the numerous sidebars which although I can hide, as a first-time viewer, I may not know that. The header area is full to the brim with the logo, log-in area, 2 menus and a notice enticing me to join and even a search bar. Quite simply, I think there is just too much there for me to get my head around.
When I move down the forum to look at your sections and posts I am greeted by the intimidation that is the “Webmaster” section. Seeing that many boards within one section is a very scary thing for a newcomer and just dominates the page whilst offering no-break down of areas. (We’ll get into that later).
The saving grace though is that I like your colour scheme and especially your logo. Your logo is very clean and professional looking which adds a sense of calm to your bustling top area. Looking at your last review, I can see things that still haven’t changed. Including your board icons, I fail to see how suns relate to a web master forum and the over-load of RSS feed images upon every section. I feel that you will only need an RSS feed for your blog/announcements section because honestly, when can you see someone using an RSS feed for your General section? Whilst I personally could cope with the clutter by hiding the side bar, I don’t believe that all your first-time visitors would have the same impression.
(Score: 9/15)
Appearance
Nowadays, it is generally perceived that a nice, simply theme is what helps your forum. Now, whilst I like your forum’s appearance in parts, I feel there are some things that could just be improved to help the user. If I could draw your attention to the top of your forum. Just below your “Search Forums” box you can see that the head section clearly ends when it merges with the main board section whilst the footer does not merge with the main board at the bottom of the page, why is this? In my view, consistency is the key to success nowadays in any web business. I don’t mind how you do it, but maybe you could separate the header from the main board or maybe join the footer to the main board, either way will help you promote consistency throughout your site.
The logo and favicon is what I am going to focus on next. Looking at your logo, as I said earlier in the review, it is a nice logo. The colours blend in with your forum colours well and I like that the favicon is a snippet of the main logo itself but the problem lies in that I do not feel the logo gives the user an impression of what the forum actually is. From what I can see, the bubble icon houses quotation marks. How does that sum up “Webmaster forum”? My personal feeling on logos is that they should represent the forum they are on. Sum up the genre if you will. I say keep the text you have on the logo but replace the bubble mark with something a bit more “admin-y” to set the tone. Maybe the generic businessman icon that I see around or maybe a little man typing away at the computer, you get the idea.
Focusing now on the board itself, I can see a distinct difference between the topics that your sections have and of course, the same again with the posts within the topics. That is good and is what I wanted to see. I hate nothing more than going to a forum and having to squint because the colours match up with the post above or they are too close together. Your blue bar separates the post perfectly and very stand-outish when put against your white background.
(Score: 14/20)
Statistics and Activity
At the time of writing, these are your stats
Threads:1,737
Posts: 14,648
Members: 1069
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that for a forum that has been going since August, those are some impressive statistics at first glance. But let’s go deeper and see what else I can find. Since your last review was done you have gained
5,931 posts which is truly impressive considering it was only on the 18th of last month you had your last review. Impressive.
Going on your last review date, I have rounded up your time since opening to 7 months for the sake of calculations. AT the current rate, you are averaging a very healthy
2,092 which I think is a number that you should be dancing on the rooftops with. Now, if I take off the number of posts that your current staff team has made you lose
4,046 posts which in its own way though, shows the commitment your staff have to the forum. With your self on 2000+ posts and most of your moderators over 200 and some pushing close to 1000, you have a very active and interactive community team.
I took away the staff posts though so that I can gauge the actual posts per members of your forum which works out at a quite measly
9 posts per member. Now, I am trying to put my finger on why this is but I believe I know why. Something is desperately wrong with the content or looks of your forum. People must either find your forum boring or hard to look at for long periods and I am going for a bit of both. Your forum is as your last review stated “sleepy”. As I am writing this, you have 467 guests trawling your forums. 467! You must think to yourself, why are they not joining? What am I doing wrong? Think back to the “First Impressions” topic where I said the view was intimidating and scary? I’d put it down to that. I feel though, a visual overhaul is needed in some sense or you need to inject some fun into the place.
(Score: 14/20)
Ratios
Now, here is where I am truly flabbergasted. If I was viewing your forum as a person who didn’t know what was below your first section, I would be terrified. I am greeted by the standard form of 3 boards (News and Updates, Feedback and Issues and Introductions). Very generic right? And very effective. So, I scroll down a little further and then I am greeted by what I would describe as the great wall of forums!
I count
seventeen boards in that one section (And that’s not counting sub-boards). As this is a web-master forum, I truly did expect something better than this. These sections can easily be split up to make the forum more friendly and appropriate for those who are navigating for sections. I’ll give you a quick overview over how I think you split these sections down.
Move (Interviews, Site Promotion and Site Reviews) to its own category. Call it something like (WebmasterBB Extras)
Leave the community title and “General Chat” and move down the Graphics, Computers and Peripherals and possibly Programming down into there and then you will have your General section sorted. Now for the main bits.
You can call this new section “Webmasters Zone” and use the site management area as the areas top board. SEO, Social Networking and Web Hosting seem to be your biggest boards and as such, deserve their own space. Then you could possibly condense the other areas into one big knowledge area.
The above is just an example of what you could do but I would say changing around and splitting up the great wall should be your main priority.
As Tindris mentioned in your last review, you seem to have some board descriptions ending with no full stops yet some end with full stops. An example of this would be the “Monetizing Board” and the “Affiliate Programs” board. It is important as I said earlier, to keep the consistency flowing.
(Score: 5/10)
Content
Looking over your Announcements board it is easy to see that you do at times put some real effort into writing our your announcements. I feel though in some topics you seem to just post a paragraph and nothing more which to me, just feels a bit short.
For example, on your 10,000 post announcement all you wrote was “Hello WBB, I thought I’d announce that we have reached a good milestone which is 10,000 total posts in the forum! Keep up the good work”. If I reached 10,000 posts on my forum I’d be pretty ecstatic. What I am getting at is that I feel that your announcements are too “static”.
You seem to post the main topic and then leave it at that. What I tend to do is write a little quirky story or in the case of a milestone being reached, a rallying message. Say instead of saying “Keep up the good work” you can put “Thank for all your hard work getting us to 10K but that is only the start for WBB, lets get that 20K!” etc. You get the idea hopefully. Grammar wise though, your posts all seem correct and I am seeing no huge mistakes or errors that are standing out to me.
(Score: 15/20)
Navigation
This section is all about whether I can find the stuff I am looking for on your forum and how easy it is for me to do so and on your forum, I had mixed results.
I was looking for your Rules thread or something similar, I didn’t see one in either of your three main sections (If I missed it, I apologize) but then I happened to see your “Guidelines” button atop the page and I though, silly me so I went to click on it and what happened? Nothing. The page as far as I am aware, doesn’t link to anything. For me, who cannot see a rules topic what am I going to think? Oh, no rules. This must mean I can do what I want! I would ask you to append that quickly and the generic FAQ that comes with VB doesn’t help much at all in that respect.
I do like how I can access the list of the staff team from any page I am which if I needed to contact a staff member immediately I wouldn’t have to go to the homepage and then to the bottom of the page. The New threads/posts are both down the side of your page which makes life a lot easier yet again although I do not see the point of the “Top Threads”, I would tend to let people find them for themselves so they can immerse themselves in your forum instead of finding the top topic they want straight away.
Over all though, your navigation is one of your stronger parts (Bar the lack of Guidelines) and I like how I can easily access what I want too, be that the search function, posts or staff list.
(Score: 13/15)
Total Score
70/100
Final Remarks
A forum with dedicated staff that also has a lot of potential. Several points need to be attended to such as the header clutter, guideline button not working and livening up the forum but the potential is there, it just needs to be unleashed. Best of luck!
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