Small Forum Review
First Impressions
Well, you have exactly what I think befits any gaming forum. A dark theme and in my eyes, your theme fits your forum very well. I personally find that dark themes are very hard to pull off but you have pulled off the theme very well. As a first time viewer, that would not be a theme I would run away from!
Going onto the activity side of my first impressions. If I didn’t know your opening date, I wouldn’t be fairly excited in all honestly. As I know your opening date, I will say that your stats could do better but they are average considering. As a first time viewer though, I wouldn’t say there is a wealth of content for me to get my heels into. Straight away, I can see that a bot populates the biggest area of your forum mostly. It sort of gives off the not-active impression. Although, whilst there is content, you could do better in that area to make it more attractive. Give all sections a mandatory target of say 15 threads / 100 posts or what have you.
Overall though, a good first impression. A nice theme which is easy on the eye and doesn’t scream out help me with some attractiveness in terms of activity and thread/post count but room for improvement.
Appearance
As I’ve said, I love your theme. What little green you have on the page works very well with the dark tones that dominate the page. It brings out what really matters. So, that aside, I went and dug a little deeper into the board itself.
I start off with your thread icons (The ones that indicate unread posts/read posts etc). I was thinking that for the unread/read posts instead of a “!” mark you could have the XBOX ring coloured in green to indicate unread and red to indicate read posts. Just to make the thing more “Xboxy” so to speak. Just to add to the sites ambience.
When I actually click onto a thread, I have only one qualm with how it is laid out. In-between each post, why not have a little divider to break up each post. Most people, including myself like to know when a post ends and a new one begins. Whilst I can tell on yours due to the date stamps you have atop the post, if I didn’t see that I would get slightly confused as the colours sort of merge with each other.
Although not appearance related as such, I feel it adds to the appearance of your site. Under XBOX 360 – Popular Games you have about 21 sub-sections, now I am not calling you out on that as I can see why there are there but do you really need to have 21 subsections on show? That’s a little intimidating in my eyes! Maybe you could keep the sib-sections but hide them from view on the homepage? They look fine when I click within the main section housing them!
Ratios and Statistics
So, by my count you have 18 boards within 4 sections. (I am discounting the Archive section) For a new forum, I would say that is sort of over-kill in a sense but I can see and empathize with why you have certain sections. Like, do you really need a “Spam Forum” area though? May as well just have a sub-section called “Forum Games” underneath “The Lounge”, generally the same thing!
Moving onto your stats, at the time of writing your stats read
Threads: 305 Posts: 692 Members: 87 even before I break out my calculator, in one month that is not bad but is not good! You’ve had 6 weeks and XBOX is a broad subject, surely you could’ve hit 1K+ in that time? Also, on the subject of activity, it seems like you have a bot that has attributed to nearly 1/7th of your total posts on the forum. I can understand the keeping your members updated thing but when I see a new forum with a bot posting a lot it just screams “I’m boosting my stats!” to myself and possibly others. That’s not an image you want to convey!
Overall, whilst you have decent stats I think they could be a lot better and think about the bot! Is it really needed at this stage in your forums life? Maybe when your forum gets more established it will be useful without messing up the stats counter!
Content
As per the content area, this includes your rules, announcements and such.
I have started my journey looking over your announcements area and having looked over your announcements, I see no striking errors. They look professionally written, properly laid out bar the one by Jacksains. (Just looks very different from Masters topics) and grammatically, they meet my standards. As a side note, I feel that you are missing a “Welcome to XBL forums” topic though; it’s always nice to welcome people!
As for your rules, they are concise, easy to read and full of information so people can have no excuse if they break the rules. That is what I like to see! Honestly, I cannot fault your announcements/rules really! Good job!
After that area though, I went with high hopes into looking at your board descriptions but then my heart sank a little! This one for example
” News for the Xbox 360 will be posted here.” For the xbox? Why not something like “News related to the XBOX 360 is posted here!” or something other. It is just that “for the” doesn’t fit right in my eyes. Over all though, your forum descriptions are good but they definitely need lightening up humorously or otherwise. They seem so uninsteresting!
Final Remarks
A good forum with a very good theme that attracts people in. A tad intimidating to see a bot posting a lot and a lot of subsections in one particular area but not immediate cause for concern. With a few slight changes, could be a very good forum to hang out and talk about XBOX!
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