Sorry for the delay.
"Nothing is personal in a review"My rating table: 91-100 - Unexpectedly Awesome
76-90 - Awesome
61-75 - Pretty Nice
41-60 - Average
21-40 - Below Average
0-20 - Fail
Graphics:
- Theme: I will mention the homepage here first. Which is very nice. The navigation bar, the icons and all. Although I suggest you lower the brightness of the banner here to make it more visible. It is almost invisible on my laptop monitor from certain angles cause the background is white too. And it would still look very nice (yeah, well, I tried it out). The other thing which I like here is that you got a button for the reviews you made about other sites. Maybe you should put the reviews you got there too. Now for the forums theme itself. Pretty gray. Clean and organized. Simple, which is not my type, but it still have the additions of finding what you want with ease. And there are some user made pages like the "Link Directory". That one may seem empty (I mean no background or some borders), but there definitely is some work in it which is inspirational. So generally I think you made a nice work so far. (9/10)
- Banner: Again, lets start with the homepage. As I said before, my only concern is the brightness of it on that white background. Howewer it matches perfectly in the forums index page. The quality is good too, and that little "buddy" on it is some interesting and matching symbol for your forum. (8/10)
- Navigation Bar: I will start with the sentence: "I like it". Nice solution. Separate oval buttons still connected with a little line. Although I can see a little glitch here. I noticed that the last button on the right ("Log In" for me) has a little sphere to represent the end of the bar. Now if you look at the most left button ("Forum" for me), you see that the little sphere is still on the right side of the picture ruining the nice effect it was made for. A mirror on the background can solve this litle issue.
Aside from that, it is very good. (8/10)
- Icons: I like the ones on the index page for "New/No New/Locked Posts". Nice little notice boards. But in the forums I see the usual dilemma. When you got a mail from someone and you have not read it yet, it is unopened right? Well, here it is the complete opposite. And I see you don`t have some different icon for the sticky or announcement threads. The "New Thread" and "Post Reply" icons are good and matching the theme of the forum. Just like the rank pictures (I mean the "Administrator", "Moderator" and such), but they are too small in my opinion. Maybe make them bigger. So there are some issues here but it is still good. (7/10)
The sum of all is 32/40. Great, I must say.
Categories & Forums:
With all your forums and services, I think you could be my buddy. Coding and graphic tutorials, and a lot of other stuff too. The descriptions are clean and understandable too. Although I miss some general discussion category or some off-topic one. That would make your forum even more likeable. Aside from that, I think you are covering everything. (17/20).
Usergroups:
You have a total of 6 usergroups. Just enough for your forum at its current state. But the population of your groups is not that good. Aside from two graphic designers, there is no other staff. You should try to find some. And I was really surprised as I saw the descriptions for every group. Cause I actually know everything I needed to know about the groups after I read the descriptions. So I see no problems here either. (18/20)
Activity:
Lets see... You have 86 members and 1706 posts. As the site is about a half year old, you have about 0,50 new member per day. Not so bad, not so good. Unfortunately, half of the posts was made by 5-6 members, including the founder himself. The number of members connected during the last 99 hours was 17 when I made this review. However, I looked into it to get a more realistic view on how many users were online in the past 24 hours period. I found out that there were 11 members. You should change that back to 24 hours, in my opinion. Anyway... That number is just about 13% of your registered members. Could be better after a half year. You should advertise on a daily level to make these numbers higher. (12/20)
More:
I spent a lot of time in the coding tutorial section. I think that can be a very attractive category to young coders out there. Just make some advanced tutorials too for experienced users. Same goes to the graphic designing section.
And so the average is 79/100 this time. Awesome, I have to say. Just lacking some activity, I think. So I wish you more active members in the near future.
And here is the code for it, if you want to put it on your site:
- Spoiler:
- Code:
[b][i]"Nothing is personal in a review"[/i][/b]
[b]My rating table:[/b]
[b][color=red]91-100[/color][/b] - Unexpectedly Awesome
[b][color=darkred]76-90[/color][/b] - Awesome
[b][color=orange]61-75[/color][/b] - Pretty Nice
[b][color=green]41-60[/color][/b] - Average
[b][color=blue]21-40[/color][/b] - Below Average
[b][color=black]0-20[/color][/b] - Fail
[justify][b]Graphics[/b]:
- [b]Theme[/b]: I will mention the homepage here first. Which is very nice. The navigation bar, the icons and all. Although I suggest you lower the brightness of the banner here to make it more visible. It is almost invisible on my laptop monitor from certain angles cause the background is white too. And it would still look very nice (yeah, well, I tried it out). The other thing which I like here is that you got a button for the reviews you made about other sites. Maybe you should put the reviews you got there too. Now for the forums theme itself. Pretty gray. Clean and organized. Simple, which is not my type, but it still have the additions of finding what you want with ease. And there are some user made pages like the "Link Directory". That one may seem empty (I mean no background or some borders), but there definitely is some work in it which is inspirational. So generally I think you made a nice work so far. ([b][color=darkred]9/10[/color][/b])
- [b]Banner[/b]: Again, lets start with the homepage. As I said before, my only concern is the brightness of it on that white background. Howewer it matches perfectly in the forums index page. The quality is good too, and that little "buddy" on it is some interesting and matching symbol for your forum. ([b][color=darkred]8/10[/color][/b])
- [b]Navigation Bar[/b]: I will start with the sentence: "I like it". Nice solution. Separate oval buttons still connected with a little line. Although I can see a little glitch here. I noticed that the last button on the right ("Log In" for me) has a little sphere to represent the end of the bar. Now if you look at the most left button ("Forum" for me), you see that the little sphere is still on the right side of the picture ruining the nice effect it was made for. A mirror on the background can solve this litle issue.
Aside from that, it is very good. ([b][color=darkred]8/10[/color][/b])
- [b]Icons[/b]: I like the ones on the index page for "New/No New/Locked Posts". Nice little notice boards. But in the forums I see the usual dilemma. When you got a mail from someone and you have not read it yet, it is unopened right? Well, here it is the complete opposite. And I see you don`t have some different icon for the sticky or announcement threads. The "New Thread" and "Post Reply" icons are good and matching the theme of the forum. Just like the rank pictures (I mean the "Administrator", "Moderator" and such), but they are too small in my opinion. Maybe make them bigger. So there are some issues here but it is still good. ([b][color=orange]7/10[/color][/b])
The sum of all is [b][color=darkred]32/40[/color][/b]. Great, I must say.
[b]Categories & Forums[/b]:
With all your forums and services, I think you could be my buddy. Coding and graphic tutorials, and a lot of other stuff too. The descriptions are clean and understandable too. Although I miss some general discussion category or some off-topic one. That would make your forum even more likeable. Aside from that, I think you are covering everything. ([b][color=darkred]17/20[/color][/b]).
[b]Usergroups[/b]:
You have a total of 6 usergroups. Just enough for your forum at its current state. But the population of your groups is not that good. Aside from two graphic designers, there is no other staff. You should try to find some. And I was really surprised as I saw the descriptions for every group. Cause I actually know everything I needed to know about the groups after I read the descriptions. So I see no problems here either. ([b][color=darkred]18/20[/color][/b])
[b]Activity[/b]:
Lets see... You have 86 members and 1706 posts. As the site is about a half year old, you have about 0,50 new member per day. Not so bad, not so good. Unfortunately, half of the posts was made by 5-6 members, including the founder himself. The number of members connected during the last 99 hours was 17 when I made this review. However, I looked into it to get a more realistic view on how many users were online in the past 24 hours period. I found out that there were 11 members. You should change that back to 24 hours, in my opinion. Anyway... That number is just about 13% of your registered members. Could be better after a half year. You should advertise on a daily level to make these numbers higher. ([b][color=green]12/20[/color][/b])
[b]More[/b]:
I spent a lot of time in the coding tutorial section. I think that can be a very attractive category to young coders out there. Just make some advanced tutorials too for experienced users. Same goes to the graphic designing section.
And so the average is [b][color=darkred]79/100[/color][/b] this time. [b][color=darkred]Awesome[/color][/b], I have to say. Just lacking some activity, I think. So I wish you more active members in the near future. [/justify]
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