Xbox Live Fan
Full Review by 2787cmt
Scoring:
First Impressions & Appearance – (17 out of 20)
When I first look at Xbox Live fan, the bright green in the color scheme jumps out at me. Bright green rarely works in a color scheme, but I think you have done a great job with your forum's theme. It makes sense for your theme to have a lot of green because it matches the Xbox logo. Now the theme does not have a lot of edits and looks pretty basic, but you have done a great job utilizing the changes you have made with an awesome background, header, and footer. As far as the header and the logo goes, I think it looks awesome. Perhaps you could work on blending the renders on the logo into the background a bit better? Graphic designers like to do that with signatures, and I think it would look excellent on your logo as well. Also, I am pretty sure you have had that logo for a while now anyways, so maybe you ought to go ahead and redo the whole thing, instead of just doing a revamp. You could get someone to redesign the header for practically nothing in the graphics marketplace here at Forum Promotion.
I really like your forum's favicon. It is nice that you have the logo text and the text on the favicon matching as well! That is another attractive feature. I also think the two bars at the top look kind of strange being together like that. The top bar is apparently for text link advertisements, but maybe you could move that to the top of the header, where the news bar is. I honestly do not feel like the news bar is getting very much attention even though it is at the top of the forum, so that would make the area between the header and the boards less cluttered. Also, I clicked on a couple of the things on the news bar, and they have been around a while, so I'm not sure if they're recent news anyways. Finally, I find it strange that I cannot find the Xbox logo anywhere on the forum? If this is not because of copyright issues or something like that, I think you could use the Xbox logo with a lot of different things. For example, the board icons look kind of bland and the dull green does not really even match the shade of green that is on the rest of the forum, so maybe you could turn the Xbox logo into your forum's board icons? I think that would look a lot better than your forum's current board icons. Overall, I think your forum has a nice theme, but there are a couple minor things that could be improved.
Site Layout – (16 out of 20)
Your forum has nine boards in four categories. You know, I think this is an awesome amount of boards. I really dislike forums that have too many boards. The number I usually go by is twelve. Rarely should a forum be starting out with more than twelve boards. With your forum's activity a little down right now, I think nine boards is perfect. If things start to pick up again, you might want to consider expanding your board layout. Maybe you could expand the "Non-Xbox Gaming" board to an entire category? Secondly, I find the "XLF Reviews & Achievement Lists" category a little unnecessary. The entire category has not had a post in it in five days, so I think it should probably be removed. The reviews are a great way to attract potential members, but maybe you should figure out a way to remove the board from the index if you do not want it to be a sub-board? Something like that could probably be on the menu, actually. You could have a "Reviews" menu button and an "Achievement Lists" menu button. Then you could just have the category hidden on the index page.
Next, I feel like the "XLF Community" category should be expanded to three boards. I feel like the "Feedback & Suggestions" sub-board deserves its own board. The board currently has 1416 posts and it appears to be pretty activity, so it seems to deserve its own board. I know if you do this, the first category will pretty much be exactly like the first category on a lot of forums, but I honestly think the first category will be better that way. Finally, I do not really like all the sub-boards in the "Game Talk" board. This board has sixteen sub-boards, and I don't really feel like this is necessary. You don't really need to have a sub-board for a particular game series. You could make topics that are dedicated to certain game series, but I feel like sub-boards is a little too much. Overall, I think your forum layout looks good, but a few things could definitely be adjusted.
Statistics and Activity – (14 out of 20)
Your forum has a total of 19,359 posts in 2536 topics. As your forum approaches the two year milestone, your forum has almost reached 20,000 posts. This means that your forum has had around 10,000 posts each year. If you break that down even more, that means 5,000 posts every six months. Then if you work that down to each month, your forum is averaging about 850 posts each month. So, this means that about 200 posts is being made on your forum each week. According to the statistics at the bottom of the forum, your forum averages 27.30 posts per day. This is not a great average, but it is fair. Next, there is an average of about seven replies per topic. This seems to be around the average statistic for most forums. It is good to see that topics are being replied to. If this statistic holds true, you might be able to get the forum more active just by brainstorming ideas for more topics. I recommend looking at other gaming forums for topic ideas. Your forum has had nearly 1,000 guests in the past 72 hours. It is safe to assume that most of these are bots, spiders, and things like that, but I still feel like this is an impressive statistic.
Unfortunately, you have had only eleven members logged on in the past 72 hours. For an established gaming forum that is receiving a lot of traffic and has a decent domain name (as far as SEO goes), I think this could be a lot better. I have seen you do a lot of paid posting for your forum in the past, but I don't feel like that is what you should be doing. Instead of putting money towards posts, I think your money might be better used on SEO work. If you can get your SEO high enough, buying posts might not even be necessary. If you have Xbox users from across the globe naturally finding your forum through Google and other search engines, then that should really get your forum to take off. Finally, your forum has 300 members. Taking the amount of posts your forum has into consideration, your forum has an average of about 65 posts per member. I think that is an average you can be proud of. Lastly, your forum has three staff members logged in the past 72 hours, but your forum has five staff members. Unless these staff members are on vacation or something, I think you need to work on making sure the staff members are staying active. You cannot expect members to stay active if the staff members are not going to be. You should see all five staff members in the "Who was here" almost always. Overall, I think your forum has good statistics, but the activity is definitely not fantastic.
Content – (17 out of 20)
As far as content goes, I think your forum has a lot of excellent content. I think the quality of some of the content is not always top notch, but you seem to be doing a great job in the more important areas of the forum. For example, reviews are one of the most attractive features gaming forums have to offer. With what appears to be a total of 23 reviews, the few reviews I looked at were fantastic. If potential members are looking for reviews, I do not think they will be disappointed. 23 is not a huge number, but you seem to have taken quality over quantity into consideration. I think one thing that could be improved is that you need to cover more recent games. For example, I think it would be awesome if you buy a game the day it comes out, and then have a review for it in the next day or two. The first week or two after a game is released is probably the best time to publish a gaming review because that is when the new game is being discussed the most. The only better time would probably be the holiday season, and if you have free time during this time period, I think the best way to spend your time is to be working on reviews. Overall, I think you have some terrific reviews on your forum that represent your forum's content really well, but other aspects of content could be worked on.
Spelling/Grammar & Professionalism – (12 out of 20)
I think the spelling and grammar around the forum is fine for the most part, but I think you should work on fixing up your board descriptions. You have a lot of proper nouns in the board descriptions that are not properly capitalized. For example, the "Consoles & Accessories" board description says this: "Talk about anything to do with all xbox consoles & accessories in this forum." I am pretty sure the word "Xbox" should be capitalized. There are a lot of board descriptions with "Xbox" not capitalized, and I think it should be. Next, there is the "Non-Xbox Gaming" board description. It says this: "Do you also play games on the nintendo and/or playstation? Are you always using your mobile phone for games instead of calls?" "Nintendo" and "PlayStation" need to be capitalized. I feel like the board descriptions would look a lot more proper and professional if you make these simple changes to the board descriptions. I feel like these very small aspects really bring down your forum's professionalism.
Also, where is your forum's general rules topic? I noticed that your forum has rules for each board at the top of the forum, but I feel like you should write up a general rules topic as well. I think this can be another sign of being not just a professional gaming community, but a serious one as well. Lastly, I noticed that your forum seems to have a lot of announcement topics. I think that you could cut down on the announcement topics. Speaking as someone who has posted on your forum before, I think they become rather annoying when you are going through and looking for a topic to reply to. They were just kind of in the way, in my opinion. Three or four announcement topics is fine, but having too many becomes distracting to the actual discussion topics. Overall, I think this entire category needs to be worked on. Your forum's spelling and grammar is okay, but the quality needs to be improved. This ultimately makes the forum seem unprofessional as well.
Total Score - (76 out of 100)
Final Remarks:
I really feel like Xbox Live Fan is a great forum. Your forum has a very large database, but as of late, the activity does not appear to be that good. With a bit of work and maybe a revamp, I think your forum's activity would definitely improve.
Strengths:
- - The quality theme.
- The large amount of traffic.
Weaknesses:
- - The low forum activity.
- The grammar and professionalism.
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