Once again my apologies for the delay in producing this.
Medium Forum Review
First Impressions
My first impression is of a board which looks a bit ?. I’m finding it very hard to put into words, but something just isn’t right, there’s nothing there to interest me or pull me in, the board looks very plain and somewhat disjointed. I can’t make out whether it’s a fixed width trying to look fluid, or the other way around.
How this looks at the moment wouldn't encourage me as a forum admin/webmaster to sign up, it just doesn't look professional enough. One thing you should do is look around the net at similar forums, adn see what they are doing, bear in mind though that not all are good, two to take look at for inspiration ( apart from FP) would be Advertising hostspot, and Admin Foums, both in the same sort of genre that you are trying to break into.
Appearance
Gold is very difficult colour to work with, and depends a lot on an individuals screen settings, with that in mind I see a header which is more orange than gold, and category bars which resemble a muddy orange, it’s not a good look, add to that the introduction of a light blue colour and the whole effect for me is quite off putting, the light blue nav bar for me doesn’t work, this is one problem with using gold as a theme colour, it’s very difficult to find complimentary colours to it.
The forum icons look like stock icons, although I see you do give a credit to someone for them, I’d be a little surprised if they were unique to your forum though.
The header I like ( except for the colour) a plain banner can be very effective, yours however loses some of that effectiveness and impact from the choice of colour and a little from the lack of styling, using the globe as an “O” is good touch, a simple reflection would add so much.
Your forum lacks a favicon, which is so easy to set up.
Ratios
The number of posts you have seem to be spread fairly evenly across the board, although hosting is starting to pull away from the rest, you need to keep your eye on these, to make sure they stay a little closer together.
Staff wise, because of the genre you are in, I feel you are probably understaffed, it will take a lot of dedication from you to keep up answering all the posts in all the forums, you do need some help there. However you do have one member who appears to be very helpful, and is posting across a wide selection of forums, it may be worth keeping an eye on them to see if they are worth promoting to a moderator position.
Posts
The posting on the board is good, hardly any one liners, and replies are informative and well written, one member is especially good at helping out others, and has spent some time replying to posts and building up the content.
A good selection of topics is being used, and they are being read, if not always replied to, the encouraging thing is that views are high.
On thing I would consider is developing more categories, put forums that are related together, it helps members to find their way around, and adds structure to the whole board, something yours is slightly lacking in, this is a very fine line, too many categories is as bad as not enough, so be careful when expanding categories, I would certainly be looking to put Web hosting, Scripts, and the finance forums into a Website Management Category, the rest could then go into a general discussion category.
Content
As with any young board content is sparse, you only just cleared the qualifying number of posts for a medium review, that though is to be expected from a forum as young as yours.
I would add that your content is too sparse for a full public launch, the forum looks unused and abandoned, I know that’s not the case, but prospective visitors wont delve, like I have.
As mentioned before what content you do have is well written and informative, you just need a lot more of it, and quickly if you have or are about to launch.
I would suggest that you need in excess of 1000 posts before you even consider going public, or directing a lot of energy into a big advertising campaign, you need to generate topics to generate interest.
Your T's and C's need to be looked at, they need to be expanded into area's other than directly concerned with the forum itself, to get an idea, look at other forum's T's and C's to see what else you should include.
Final Remarks
The forum needs a lot of TLC, and quite a few tweaks, I would put this in the same genre as most other webmaster forums out there, so it is by no way unique, you have a lot of competition, it’s going to be hard work for a long time if you really want to be up there with the other large forums.
Of paramount importance I think is the theme, for me it just doesn’t work with the gold/blue/black, I personally would drop the gold and look for a complimentary colour to the blue, saying that, at the moment every other forum is blue, so moving from that colour completely would not be a bad idea either.
Content can easily be increased by investing in some posting packages, use packages well by saying which categories you want the posts in, also review what’s being posted, and if you feel there are too many one liners etc, request the package be done again.
I would try to increase your number of categories, that will/should increase interest, also some of the titles need a tweak, I was under the impression that “Graphics” was a graphic request forum, ( I know the description says otherwise) however it turns out to be a discussion forum, that just shows how important it is to get forum titles right.
As I said, you are in a very competitive genre, you will need to stand out to succeed, you will also have to offer something unique.
Improving the visibility of your forum will bring you members, you need to get a mention on every webmaster forum out there, the people you want as members are on these forums, that is why you need at least one staff member, a person to help spread the name, as well as contributing to your own forum.
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