Medium Forum Review
First Impressions
The odd thing about your site which I notice when I visit is that my eye is not drawn to any specific point. There is nothing that really catches my attention or draws my line of sight. It is very unusual for nothing what so ever to do this but it does mean that you are able to choose easily now that this has been brought up. Choice is always a good thing! Another thing that I notice straight away is that a huge portion of the first screen area viewed by a new visitor consists of the header, menu and login area. There is hardly any of the board or any real content visible meaning there is nothing that can catch my eye and get me reading, which in turn could make me want to read more. I find both the advert and the very wide and bright login bar very off-putting. I can understand that you need the login bar, but you could easily halve the width and still get the same effect. I think the main reason your site isn’t very easy and friendly on the eyes is because of the way the wrapper and background melt together. I feel you need a greater difference between the colours, maybe a darker, steel grey on the background instead. Or you could even go for a very pale grey wrapper. The site needs to flow more and I need to feel that this is something special and unique that I want to continue viewing.
Another thing that strikes me as odd is there is nothing that is really telling me what your forum is actually about. Sure, the logo says Stellar Recharge, but I have no idea what Stellar Recharge is. There are no images I can associate with, any descriptions, not even the slogan tells me anything. The most informative piece of information on the top of your board is the Log in or Register to remove advertisements. I really need more information about the forum, not how to remove ads, however annoying they might be.
Appearance
You are using a classic blue colour scheme which is daringly strong. I don’t mind and I find it quite interesting and a little unique. What I do feel is harder to like about this theme is the contrast between blue and grey, the shades difference is just too great for my liking. Grey is a difficult colour to work with due to its dull feel, which works fine with darker blues. In this case you have chosen a very vibrant blue, which gives the opposite effect. A pale wrapper which is a half way line between the two colours would help to tie the colours together better. Another way of doing this is to avoid the current block of colours and let the colours run into each other much more. With this I mean for example the section headers, here you could have a grey pattern running at a 50 % opacity in the background, which would help bring the background more into the image. Even just having some stripes in blue on the section header would bring the background more into the theme.
The board titles are still very difficult to read, this is something I believe was mentioned in your last review too. Making these white or a very pale grey would be much better. Currently they look very fuzzy but I believe this is due to the colour clash only. The same happens on the sub-boards. The board markers are good, but the red board marker is just a bit too strong for its purpose, maybe having a white background instead of red would work better.
Overall I really feel you need a lighter background on the actual board index, this would make the whole thing much easier to read, navigate and to look at. The borders you have added on the sides help to frame things in a bit better, but I still feel my eyes wandering far too much. Another reason for changing the background would be to make it easier to see the moderator and administrators names as there is a colour clash here too. You have a very high footer with not much content on it, I suggest reducing the height to four lines.
Ratios
After being open for around two and a half months you have gained around 1900 posts, which gives you an average of 25 posts a day. For a new forum this is very good, you have worked hard to get those posts, keep it up. Your members have made an average of 68 posts each which is also great statistics. Even after deducting your staff post counts you still have an average of 50 posts per member which for a new forum is very, very good.
You currently have 3 staff members, which is a good number for the amount of posts you have. You probably won’t need to hire any more staff in a while though. Looking at the board, an overwhelming amount of your posts are in the off-topic section which isn’t very good. I would expect to see many more posts in the main discussion areas. The picture I usually get of forums that have the problem you have here is that the members are not really interested in the forum niche, which is always a worrying thing. You and your staff need to put a lot more effort into getting your members posting in the on-topic section. Apart from this issue you have a good amount of boards that are well divided into different sections.
Posts
Most of your posts are of a pretty good quality. They are usually a couple of sentences long which is good; they also contain a lot of keywords for your site which is beneficial from a SEO point of view. The grammar and spelling is very varied though, you have a large portion of members that use very poor grammar and a lot of text type (Shortened words and phrases) which doesn’t look very good. As your forum is about a game this doesn’t matter too much, but remember that it can put off some users. The discussions in your posts flow well and stay on topic which is positive.
Your staff interacts well in discussions and use good punctuation, spelling and grammar. This is very good and is the best way forward as they will eventually pull all members with them to use the same correct language as they do. You should continue to encourage your staff on this point.
Content
Your board descriptions are mostly a couple of sentences long and give good information on what each board is about. It isn’t often I get to see a forum with good board descriptions, so you should be very happy with this. I feel that you need to look a little into your board names as you are using different styles of writing on each board title. Your forum guidelines are very well written and cover all aspects of your forum. I can see that you have put a lot of time and effort into this department, well done!
Final Remarks
After getting past the initial looks of your forum I have discovered a forum that is active and has a great community. You have put a lot of work into your community and once you get the outward face sorted I believe this forum will do very well. You need to put a bit more work into the outward face, the image and information projected to new visitors. Once you have done this then you have a winning concept with a very brandable and SEO friendly domain.
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