So since we are just starting out I asked for a review of my forum to get some opinions and I just wanted to share it. If any of you guys have suggestions for our forums just post it down below.
Reviewed by: Luffy (forumotion staff)
G-Forum
 | First Impressions |  |
 | General Forum Appearance | |
 | Forum Activity | |
 | Staff & Usergroups |  |
 | Forum Originality | |
 | Forum Layout & Organization |  |
 | Grammar & Spelling | |
Conclusions
- My first impressions over your forum are good. You have a nice forum with a nice Theme and Design. The logo of the forum is great although i think the colors of the categories bar should be stabled to a suitable color. Also to read all categories titles the color of the titles should be grey by my opinion. The forum activity as for now is perfect even though i believe it should have more members. Having 10 registered members and 8 of them logging in its excellent work. You could do something to the forum to attract more members so you can gain more activity and have an even better forum. The staff and the usergroups you have are fine for me but i think you should add members into them to make them have a reason to stay and post in your forum. You have a lot of groups but only 2 of them have members that log in to our forum. That should change! The forum originality is okay but i've seen some similar forums to yours. Details count and you could add some details that are unique and make your forum better. The layout and organization is good even though you have some categories that are taking only space and making the forum length bigger. You have a lot of discussion forums that i think should be merged to one. If you want the discussions to be in one place i suggest you have it to your last section of your forum so it's only there that members can 'spam'. Also i think you could make huge changes to the categories and make them more unique by making the posts and topics columns merged to one and having a bigger forum column. Also add a toggle effect to the categories and make the last post column smaller. Last but not least the grammar and spelling mistakes are only the first letter to your categories that i suggest you make it capitalized so that it all looks the same. That is a small detail though. The rest is fine! Excellent work!
Forum Strengths
- Forum Design
- Logo
- Navigation Bar
- Activity
- Organization of categories
Forum Weaknesses
- Forum Length
- Topics and Posts columns
- Few posts
Average Review Score: 8.9 / 10 (Excellent!)
Second Review by: Rapture
G-Forum
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| Forum Originality
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| Forum Layout & Organization
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| Grammar & Spelling
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Conclusions
- Hello George! My first impressions are great! You have a solid forum with great features and originality that keep me interested. Here are some minor things you can think about: Your naviagtion menu is not centered, however, the rest of your site is. I would consider centering it and adding image buttons instead of normal text to give it a more professional feel to it, however this is up to your personal taste. The other personal thing I personally don't like is that the default color of the widgets is red. Now I LOVE that I can change the color manually but I would consider making it some kind of blue to help with blending, your website doesn't have any red so it stands out a little bit too much in my opinion. Last thing regarding general apearance, I would consider giving the overall forum body some extra width, if your forum gained some fat it would look perfect to my eyes!
- General forum apearance is great actually! Well done. I would only suggest a few things, capitalize each description, try adding a slightly darker white color on hover of your categories to make it more appealing, and add images to the descriptions (this could be a lot of work but consider putting in the efford, it would help your users find the forum they seek easily!). Then I came across this: ''Global announcement&Announcement & Sticky'' I would suggest you fix the title of the Announcments & Stickies. The other thing I don't like is how it counts the number of Topics, but on the bottom of the topics list. This is a bit confusing, I would say just remove that or separate the Announcments and Stickies and Topics with a TABLE, it's unclear where the important threads end and where the latest ones begin.
- Your forum activity is great, you have 10 registered users and almost all of them have visited your forum in the last 2 days. Just promote your forum, it should be very successful!
- Groups are great, nothing much to say about them. Well done! However, work on your forum Ranks, they are really unorganized! Try to remove the text or trim it down maybe?
- Your Forum originality is actually very nice, I have seen similar forums, but yours does stand out from many of them. I would only suggest you add custom widgets like the Recent Topics you have on the portalto your forum too since that is your homepage, the first thing people see when they come to your forum.
- Forum Layout and Organization is nice, my only suggestion would be to find a way to remove some of your empty spaces, for example, on your categories. They are all quite big, I feel like it would be easier to find the one I'm looking for if they all were just a bit thinner. Also, find a way to fill in the empty space on your portal, or remove some widgets from there.
- I found this mistake, under Web Design, ''Programing'' is spelled ''Programming', then there are some words that you merge together like wordpress but I guess that's what you meant so don't worry about it. You also forgot to capitalize some of your category descriptions
Forum Strengths
- Originality
- Lack of bugs
- Logo
- Custom Features
Forum Weaknesses
- Navigation Menu
- Ranks on forum
- Some empty spaces and extra width
Average Review Score: 61/70 (Great Score!!)
Second Review by: brandon_g
G-Forum
| First Impressions | |
| General Forum Appearance | |
| Forum Activity |  |
| Staff & Usergroups |  |
| Forum Originality | |
| Forum Layout & Organization | |
| Grammar & Spelling | |
Conclusions
- As I enter your forum, I am greeted by a huge but friendly banner. My eyes then catch the beautiful red color of your categories. A few seconds after entering your forum I am already eager to have a more thorough look around. The only downside of your pretty banner is it is HUGE and if someone were to view it from a mobile phone or tablet they will be scrolling down quite a bit. I would suggest re-sizing it and making it smaller, for those who visit your site on smaller screens. Overall my first impressions of your forum could not be much better.
- As I foreshadowed in my first impressions, your forum design is BEATIFUL, it is probably one of your biggest strong points. From the very top of your forum the blue banner although very huge; is gentle on eyes and represents your forum's focus nicely. Now as I scroll down the page, the transformation from blue to red is done quite seamlessly and allows my eyes plenty of time to adjust. As I mentioned before, the red background color of your categories is very beautiful. As I continue to scroll down I notice your forum icons, they are very unique, however I would change the 'new posts' icon to the color green or red, it is not that the blue is bad choice of color, I just think that green or some other brighter color would suit a 'new post' icon better. The 'new post' icon should be eye catching, while the blue does sort of work, as I scroll down and those social media icons follow me, the blue icons get mixed right in. It is not easy to distinguish right away, you change this to a darker or brighter color and I think your icons would be near perfect! Overall though your forum appearance is lovely to look at and I would personally say a job well done, especially considering how new your forum is. Your appearance is one your forum's strongest point, however, by applying a few of the suggestions I mentioned above it has the potential to be even better.
- Now moving on to your forum activity, for a forum that just started, your registered members count is doing very well. The only thing I noticed is that among the members that have been on the site within the last 24 hours, only 2 or 3 are actually posting anything. I would suggest coming up some creative ways to get members to post, I would personally suggest holding contests, maybe you can try implementing a points system and allowing members to spend the points they earn on extra features, custom graphics and things like that. Your forum appears to be about graphics and computer design, so a points system and shop would be very easy to come up with. I would try brainstorming ideas with your staff and see what you can come up with. Overall, your forum activity is doing excellenct so far, now you just have to get members posting, if you implement some of the suggestions I listed, I think you will find your forum getting real popular, real fast.
- Moving on to your Staff and user groups, I notice you have a LOT of usergroups to start out with. I can see 3 or maybe 4 staff groups that are needed, however, one of them is not really needed really 'G-Forum Experts', what is the role of this group? Are they similar to Managers found on other forums? If so, I would personally suggest re-naming the group 'Managers'. If I am wrong about that group's role then please just ignore that suggestion. Now for what I assume is your usergroups, I noticed you have 'VIP' and 'G-Forum Helpers' those groups are (on most forums) very similar, most forums have either a VIP or Forum Helpers group, but not both. I do not know what your plan is for those 2 groups, however, I encourage you to consider possibly merging these 2 groups together. The groups are very identical, the perks to both are often very similar, merging them would give you less groups, as well as make it easier to include exclusive only features, content and perks. It would also make it less confusing to members, easier to keep track of the VIP/Forum Helpers. Overall, the groups themselves are all good, there are just a couple that are very similar and may work better merged as one; I think if you merge the groups listed above, your staff/usergroups would be just about perfect.
- The idea behind your forum is quite unique, although graphic design and computer design/software forums are quite common, a forum that deals with both of these (as a primary theme) is quite unique and you have your forum laid out in such a way that it gives equal attention to both of these themes, is what makes your forum extremely unique. You have blended these 2 elements together in a way that will be successful in the long run. Overall, you have done a flawless job with turning 2 very common themes and making it unique. I like your forum originality very much, you have a very creative forum, keep up the good work!
- Your Forum Organization and Layout is fine and your forum Grammar and Spelling looks good too (now that you fixed those forum descriptions). So I have no more complaints and I must say, you have a very good forum there! It is already on the right path to success. Well done and keep up the good work.
Forum Strengths
- Nice Banner
- Forum is organized nicely
- The Forum design is beautiful and gentle on the eyes
- A lot of new members right off the bat
Forum Weaknesses
- Too many staff/usergroups
- Banner is too big on mobile devices
- Forum icons are not that eye catching and blend in with social media icons
- A lot of members not posting
Average Review Score: 55/70 Good Job!
Last edited by george on Tue Mar 10, 2015 4:19 pm; edited 6 times in total
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