What does the fox say? Feedback + Standard

[Teg]

Site URL: http://wdthefoxsay.boards.net
Review Type: feedback + Standard
Extra Notes: Just for record with New/Old icons, all old icons are dark while the new icons are lit up with the same color of the "Category Title" for which the boards are in. Additionally. This forum is only a few days old, so please keep that in mind when reviewing or giving feedback. Thanks.

 

[Teapot]

Your Review is In Progress!​

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Thank you for requesting feedback. I have tagged your thread, and will finish an official review within at most 72 hours. In the meantime, you will receive informal feedback from other reviewers and members at Forum Promotion. Once your official review is complete, you will be free to ask questions and receive feedback so long as your website remains only, and this topic remains reasonably active. You will also be able to request a re-review 14 days after this review is completed.

 

[Thomasss]

Just a few suggestions:

Favicon I really you should change the default favicon to maybe something of a fox face with paint brushes on both sides, or something around that. The default favicon isn't really appealing, and know that they have a way to upload your own favicon in the ACP it makes it really easy.

Background Shadow I find the background shadows on some of the text a tad tacky, especially the custom titles and the stats on the main page, but that's just my pet peeve of text shadows. 😛

Board Headers I honestly thing the headers (where the category name appears) should be another color, something that does not blend in to the background so well.

Other than that, I think the site looks really well. ^.^ Good luck with it!

 

[Sunshower]

I definitely second changing the favicon! The fox in your header looks like a cute start; anything that changes the default one will make your forum stand out, though. A second thing I would consider is to increase font size! I believe that the web standard right now is 16px. Although the 10pt font can look stylish, it really makes it difficult to read (especially for older users, or visually-impaired users), and increasing your font size and line height will do wonders for legibility. 🙂

 

[Teapot]

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What Does The Fox Say?
Review by Teapot​

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First Impressions
[note]========== BEGIN - First Impressions ==========[/note]
My first impressions of What Does The Fox Say were excellent. You have a brilliantly put together forum. The Welcome banner is simple, yet effective. The fox is also a great addition and really adds personality to your forum. The theme itself is clean and easy on the eyes. I really enjoy the color scheme you have going with the category titles and such as well. Also, the forum icons tie in perfectly with the theme, it looks great. I can tell your forum is bumping with activity, but I do not think that enough attention is being paid to the graphic side of the forum. After all, that is the main purpose of your forum. More of your members are posting in the off-topic sections. I feel that if you really do want What Does The Fox Say to thrive in any possible way, it is a must to promote activity in the graphics section.
[note]========== END - First Impressions ==========[/note]
Excellent

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Design Quality
[note]========== BEGIN - Design Quality ==========[/note]
The overall forum as a whole has a great design. Much like I had mentioned a little bit earlier, it is simple and not at all overwhelming. The theme itself is mostly colored black, but what makes this theme so great is that it makes viewing your site easier thanks to lighter tones that accompany it.

Some people tend to dislike darker themes sometimes because it's hard on their eyes. With the lighter tone (as seen in the screenshot above), your site can appear lighter than what it actually is. You also have a very nice color scheme going in your categories and the welcome banner at the top. One thing I do dislike, however, is the font size. It is very small and makes the forum look emptier than it really is. Especially on posts-- it leaves a ton of room at the bottom of a post because the post bit is larger than the actual text. By adding a bigger text size, this can definitely balance out the ratio of sizes between the post and post bit, and on the index page. The post bit also looks a little bare as well, so maybe making it to show gender or location (or anything of that sort) could help add on to the space left to fill. You should also work on making some user ranks. The ProBoards stars look tacky in my opinion and I think you could really pull off a nice set of user ranks. It would definitely look really nice and sleek with them.

Overall, I love the design. It's very well thought out and put together, especially for a forum that only took 24 hours to produce.
[note]========== END - Design Quality ==========[/note]
Good

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Site Structure
[note]========== BEGIN - Site Structure ==========[/note]
Currently you have 3 categories with 8 main boards. This is the perfect amount. It makes your forum look a lot less overwhelming than what it needs to be and also is great since you are so new. A lot of newer forums tend to go overboard with the number of boards they have. Some of them even tend to be extremely inactive boards because they just simply don't interest anyone. This causes the forum itself to look inactive in some aspects and it just becomes a great big mess. But you did a very good job combating this with fewer boards that are to the point.

Like I had touched on earlier, the Art & Design category seems to be a lot less active than your off topic category. I feel like this presents somewhat of a partial problem given the fact that your forum is primarily graphically focused. If your main audience is towards graphic designers or people interested in graphic design and art, I think you should liven that section up a little more. This will help to fish in the types of users you really want because they will be eager to share their masterpieces with you. 🙂
[note]========== END - Site Structure ==========[/note]
Good

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Final Remarks​

What Does The Fox Say is a brilliantly designed and thought out project. It offers a warm community for graphic designers and art lovers all over. It has so much potential to grow in thrive in every possible way and I really can't wait to see how things turn out. I'm honestly still shocked that you put it together so fast. Nonetheless, keep up the awesome work.​

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Your Score​

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[Teg]

I definitely second changing the favicon! The fox in your header looks like a cute start; anything that changes the default one will make your forum stand out, though. A second thing I would consider is to increase font size! I believe that the web standard right now is 16px. Although the 10pt font can look stylish, it really makes it difficult to read (especially for older users, or visually-impaired users), and increasing your font size and line height will do wonders for legibility. 🙂

I increased the font size from 10pt to 12pt. I tried 14pt and 16 point, but it was entirely way too big for this forum. I added a favicon as well.

Just a few suggestions:

Favicon I really you should change the default favicon to maybe something of a fox face with paint brushes on both sides, or something around that. The default favicon isn't really appealing, and know that they have a way to upload your own favicon in the ACP it makes it really easy.

Background Shadow I find the background shadows on some of the text a tad tacky, especially the custom titles and the stats on the main page, but that's just my pet peeve of text shadows. 😛

Board Headers I honestly thing the headers (where the category name appears) should be another color, something that does not blend in to the background so well.

Other than that, I think the site looks really well. ^.^ Good luck with it!

Favicon has been added. I have shadows turned off for all text on the forum, so I'm not sure why you are seeing shadows. I chose the dark header color simply because it was a tad lighter than the actual background. Header=Category, sorry about that. Either way, it being slightly lighter doesn't take away from the forum too much in my opinion, so I do believe I will leave those the correct colors.

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What Does The Fox Say?
Review by Teapot​

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First Impressions
[note]========== BEGIN - First Impressions ==========[/note]
My first impressions of What Does The Fox Say were excellent. You have a brilliantly put together forum. The Welcome banner is simple, yet effective. The fox is also a great addition and really adds personality to your forum. The theme itself is clean and easy on the eyes. I really enjoy the color scheme you have going with the category titles and such as well. Also, the forum icons tie in perfectly with the theme, it looks great. I can tell your forum is bumping with activity, but I do not think that enough attention is being paid to the graphic side of the forum. After all, that is the main purpose of your forum. More of your members are posting in the off-topic sections. I feel that if you really do want What Does The Fox Say to thrive in any possible way, it is a must to promote activity in the graphics section.
[note]========== END - First Impressions ==========[/note]
Excellent

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Design Quality
[note]========== BEGIN - Design Quality ==========[/note]
The overall forum as a whole has a great design. Much like I had mentioned a little bit earlier, it is simple and not at all overwhelming. The theme itself is mostly colored black, but what makes this theme so great is that it makes viewing your site easier thanks to lighter tones that accompany it.

Some people tend to dislike darker themes sometimes because it's hard on their eyes. With the lighter tone (as seen in the screenshot above), your site can appear lighter than what it actually is. You also have a very nice color scheme going in your categories and the welcome banner at the top. One thing I do dislike, however, is the font size. It is very small and makes the forum look emptier than it really is. Especially on posts-- it leaves a ton of room at the bottom of a post because the post bit is larger than the actual text. By adding a bigger text size, this can definitely balance out the ratio of sizes between the post and post bit, and on the index page. The post bit also looks a little bare as well, so maybe making it to show gender or location (or anything of that sort) could help add on to the space left to fill. You should also work on making some user ranks. The ProBoards stars look tacky in my opinion and I think you could really pull off a nice set of user ranks. It would definitely look really nice and sleek with them.

Overall, I love the design. It's very well thought out and put together, especially for a forum that only took 24 hours to produce.
[note]========== END - Design Quality ==========[/note]
Good

---

Site Structure
[note]========== BEGIN - Site Structure ==========[/note]
Currently you have 3 categories with 8 main boards. This is the perfect amount. It makes your forum look a lot less overwhelming than what it needs to be and also is great since you are so new. A lot of newer forums tend to go overboard with the number of boards they have. Some of them even tend to be extremely inactive boards because they just simply don't interest anyone. This causes the forum itself to look inactive in some aspects and it just becomes a great big mess. But you did a very good job combating this with fewer boards that are to the point.

Like I had touched on earlier, the Art & Design category seems to be a lot less active than your off topic category. I feel like this presents somewhat of a partial problem given the fact that your forum is primarily graphically focused. If your main audience is towards graphic designers or people interested in graphic design and art, I think you should liven that section up a little more. This will help to fish in the types of users you really want because they will be eager to share their masterpieces with you. 🙂
[note]========== END - Site Structure ==========[/note]
Good

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Final Remarks​

What Does The Fox Say is a brilliantly designed and thought out project. It offers a warm community for graphic designers and art lovers all over. It has so much potential to grow in thrive in every possible way and I really can't wait to see how things turn out. I'm honestly still shocked that you put it together so fast. Nonetheless, keep up the awesome work.​

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Your Score​

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Okay, the font issue has been addressed for now. Anything over what I have it now looks horrible but it was changed from 10pt to 12pt. As for getting things together in the Art Showcase area, that's in the works. I need to finish my portfolio and stuff before I can do much more with graphic and Web design so that I can showcase my art. Either way, there are only six members on the forum so that is partially the reason why. I'm advertising on several forums, in all of my signatures (that allow me to) and on social media. I've even submitted my site to google and bing. But, I'll be adding more work when my portfolio is finished. I've been working on it now for five days and I've only just finished the home & about pages...

 

[Cam]

Cash has been Deducted!​

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Thank you for using the Forum Promotion review service. We have deducted 100 FP$ from your account in exchange for conducting a Standard Review. You can request another review after 14 days.

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[jonnybrobot]

I'm diging the theme so your doing something good. You should chang the main pick to a better fox though and i'm woundering how long your forums have bin around. you do have a lot of posts right now that is if your forum hasn't been around that long.

 

[Teg]

I'm diging the theme so your doing something good. You should chang the main pick to a better fox though and i'm woundering how long your forums have bin around. you do have a lot of posts right now that is if your forum hasn't been around that long.

With the fox and easel, I wanted to portray an illustration indicating an art forum. As of Tuesday, the forum turned 1 week old.

 

[Ash]

I love the look of the forum theme and the logo is a really nice touch. I would agree with what was said above that maybe the fox could be changed, maybe a more cartoonish fox. Forum activity is also good although a few sections havn't been posted in for a while. Good luck with it 🙂

 

[Teg]

I love the look of the forum theme and the logo is a really nice touch. I would agree with what was said above that maybe the fox could be changed, maybe a more cartoonish fox. Forum activity is also good although a few sections havn't been posted in for a while. Good luck with it 🙂

Thanks king cool. As I'm working on a bigger, potential income project, I've not had time to mess with the fox, but I will definitely consider it! I appreciate the kind words!