Large Forum Review
First Impressions
First Impression when the index page opened was “great, a good looking forum” and it’s not often that I say that, a good in genre background, the banner looks good at first with great use of the X Box logo. Then I began to notice small details such as no favicon in the browser, it’s then that you start to look deeper, the second thing that comes to light is that not much effort apart from the logo, (which I assume is a stock png), has gone into the banner, the text chosen is rather plain, with no effort to customise it in any way, not even a drop shadow to give it depth.
It’s not really necessary to have your URL in the banner, and certainly not as big as it is, I would also question whether a .org is the best domain to have for what is primarily a gamers forum.
Otherwise the plain style is quite appealing to me, except I am 54, and I am sure it is not my age group you wish to be appealing to?.
(Score: 9/15)
Appearance
The general appearance of the forum is good, the steel grey with the green is in keeping with the X Box genre, and gives the forum a technical feel, I just think that it’s all a bit quiet and peaceful, when my son plays on his Xbox, it’s anything but, so I would say you need to inject some action and noise into the theme, mainly by customisation, some forum locked, new post Icons would be a start.
Now we come to the biggest problem, I am sure glad the scroll wheel was invented, because moving up and down the index relying on a scroll bar would be a right pain in the neck !. Your forum descriptions are more like essays, and the icons are way too large.
Far too many of the forums are underused to warrant an index page listing, reduce them to subforums and make that page shorter, shorten the descriptions and make the index page a lot lighter to read, if you must have such long winded descriptions use the forum rules area to go deeper.
eg: You have :
Sports & Athletics
Whats your favorite sport? Whats your favorite athletics event? Whats your favorite sports or athletics team? Whats your favorite sports or athletics venue? What sports do you play? Talk about all sports & athletics related topics here!
I would have:
Sports
Discuss the sports you love to play and watch with other members
You seriously need to look at the amount of forums you have, the topics they cover and the number of posts they are generating.
(Score: 12/20)
Statistics and Activity
The forum has been open for the best part of nine months now, having less than 2000 posts in that time means it is not the best of starts, to have any chance of success a forum needs to open with at least 1000 posts, so assuming you did that, progress has been quite slow. The most worrying thing is that your members are posting more in non genre forums than the on genre forums, this is another indication that the forums are a little unique, you need to generalise them a little more, and merge some that are similar; e.g Console & Accessory reviews would be one to merge, as neither have any posts. Another suggestion would be to make the Achievement Listing a subforum of the games forum ?.
You really do need to sit down, take a long hard look at the index page and realise that some things are just not working.
(Score: 11/20)
Ratios
Your staff to member ratio is fine, 97 members but not all active is easy for one admin to control, I’m quite sure from the legend if any of the other groups have moderation roles, as that is not made clear.
As outlined previously the posting ratios are better in the non genre forums, there has to be a reason for this, and that could be you are not generating enough threads in the genre forums yourself.
(Score: 7/10)
Content
As touched on previously your members are not contributing that much to the genre forums, introductions is far the busiest, followed by feedback & suggestions, some of the forums have no content whatsoever, not even a topic started by yourself, which it has to be said is not good for the forums image. The “Other Consoles” category actually has a lot more posts than some of the in genre categories and forums, something else which should be making you think. The advertising area IMO is a bad move, you are not a promotion forum, affiliates are fine, but allowing users to use your forum to promote their own, especially other in genre forums is a bad move, either be a promotion forum, or an X Box forum, don’t confuse members by trying to do too much. At my time of viewing no members or Admin were logged in, you as Admin should be there as often as possible, creating threads and replying to posts, making the forum appear busy and used, when I checked the active topics, no new threads had been created in 24 hrs, no forum with that kind of attention will succeed.
(Score: 9/20)
Navigation
Because of the length of the Index page I have to mark you down straight away, it’s just a chore to scroll down through all those descriptions and massive forum images, which I must add I can see no apparent reason for.
Once you get past that, the navigation is… well.. phpBB, it works, and it gets you where you want to go.
(Score: 10/15)
Total Score
58/100
Final Remarks
The final score reflects on the lack of attention the forum has had since launch, you have to assume that a favicon has been missing that long, which is a poor oversight, the length of the forum descriptions need to be shortened dramatically, not only to reduce the length of the index page but also to make it easier for prospective members to glance through what you are going to entertain them with.
The forum design itself is clean and to be honest I like it, the theme is good, and goes well with the genre, I’m just not sure that those in the gaming age and fraternity want clean and simple, my 17 yr old who is an X Box, PS3, Pc game junkie, is always on about “kick ass” graphics, and I have to say the forum he frequents looks nothing like yours.
All this need not cost you a penny, a lot of the work can be done just by looking at your forum with a critical eye, and deciding what can and cannot go, I’m not saying delete, I’m saying create the odd sub forum here and there.
Decent graphics can be bought for FP cash, and there are some great designers out there doing work for us.
The X Box genre of forum is quite crowded, so it’s not going to be easy to be one of the top twenty let alone top ten or five.
I would suggest you look around a few to give you an idea of what you are up against and for some inspiration for the direction you need to go.
http://www.xbox360forum.com/xbox-forum/forum.php
http://forum.teamxbox.com/
http://www.clanfod.com/xbox/forum.php
These are all busy forums, and are doing something right, they should give you some idea’s of which way to go.
Good luck for the future and I hope this review has helped in some way.
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