Ive browsed through your forum using latest versions of three most-used Internet browsers, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Opera, and havent found any major flaws or bugs, which is an important basis for every website/forum to start with. The first thing that caught my attention was forum activity and members' dedication to posting, rather than it's design. This situation is not so common when I usually visit forums, so I may say that I'm really impressed. Other than it's activity, the forum has pretty simple and usable design, which is great for reading, posting, and generally having a comfortable time while being online, but it's not very good when you're trying to be distinctive and original. Yes, your forum is well designed, but other than it's not-so-distictive logo, it doesn't have anything that will make a returning visitor recognize it instantly. Like, for example, when you big curly M logo with red background, you can instantly say it's McDonald's, without a need to look at it's name. Or if you see a red & blue ball divided by white wavy line, you recognize Pepsi, without any need to read the word. In general, your forum is very, very good, and I'll talk more about details in other sections of this review.
Your forum's logo is simple, decently designed, with no excess colours or details. I can comfirm that for the navigation, too, very usable and readable, tough I would add some hover effect on them, or at least opacity change on hover - it improves interaction with forum. Colour pallete is pretty monochromatic, but using different nuances of one color can sometimes (like in this forum's case) be more attractive and professional than using many. When it comes to icons of your forum, I would change them. Folders are very default ones, so putting something different will give your forum's design more of a personal touch, some recognition among the exsiting and newcoming members. Other than that, I've noticed that just a few mods have signatures in posts, so I guess signatures are restricted to anyone except staff, which is very good practice if you want to build a professional forum where content will be the first and most important thing people should care about. As for the portal, you haven't used it's full capacity, you should add more content or interesting widgets in order to make it more interactive and distinctive. All in all, it's a pleasure to browse through your forum, and in order to improve it, you should think about changing a few things I mentioned in this section of the review.
This is exact example of how forum's staff should be organized. Two admins are more than enough to handle the tech part of the forums, and 4 global mods are enough to handle the whole forum. I'm sure that forum that's active like this one requires a lot of moderation, but with enough dedication and organization, everything will be fine. I think your forum should be a role model for anyone who wants success in this field of Internet. Keep up the good work.
This forum is mostly football oriented, though it has some other interesting sections too, so it's main topic is not something innovative or original, but forum itself is. Although it doesn't have distincitve design, it's popular because it's usable, comfortable, and above all, it has valuable content which is essential to any forum. People say: "Don't judge book by it's cover", which is more than true, but in order for more people to hear about your forum, and in order to recognize it faster, please, work just a little bit on the details and eveything else will come along.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you liked the review.
If you want to share this review with your forum's members, feel free to use this code
- Code:
[table cellspacing=0 width=100% style="border: 1px solid #41403e;"][tr][td width=51 height=49 style="background-image: url('http://i42.tinypic.com/vo97ya.png'); background-repeat: no-repeat;"][/td][td style="background: url('http://i42.tinypic.com/vo97ya.png'); padding-bottom: 5px;"][center][size=20][color=#e6e6e6][b]The-Playmaker Review[/b][/color][/size][/center][/td][/tr][/table][table cellspacing=0 width=100% style="border-left: 1px solid #41403e; border-right: 1px solid #41403e; border-bottom: 1px solid #41403e;"][tr][td style="padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px; background-color: #f7f7f7; background-image: url('http://i39.tinypic.com/jl76z7.png')"]
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/gPKLS.png[/IMG]
[list]Ive browsed through your forum using latest versions of three most-used Internet browsers, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Opera, and havent found any major flaws or bugs, which is an important basis for every website/forum to start with. The first thing that caught my attention was forum activity and members' dedication to posting, rather than it's design. This situation is not so common when I usually visit forums, so I may say that I'm really impressed. Other than it's activity, the forum has pretty simple and usable design, which is great for reading, posting, and generally having a comfortable time while being online, but it's not very good when you're trying to be distinctive and original. Yes, your forum is well designed, but other than it's not-so-distictive logo, it doesn't have anything that will make a returning visitor recognize it instantly. Like, for example, when you big curly M logo with red background, you can instantly say it's McDonald's, without a need to look at it's name. Or if you see a red & blue ball divided by white wavy line, you recognize Pepsi, without any need to read the word. In general, your forum is very, very good, and I'll talk more about details in other sections of this review. [/list]
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/CSxfY.png[/IMG]
[list]Your forum's logo is simple, decently designed, with no excess colours or details. I can comfirm that for the navigation, too, very usable and readable, tough I would add some hover effect on them, or at least opacity change on hover - it improves interaction with forum. Colour pallete is pretty monochromatic, but using different nuances of one color can sometimes (like in this forum's case) be more attractive and professional than using many. When it comes to icons of your forum, I would change them. Folders are very default ones, so putting something different will give your forum's design more of a personal touch, some recognition among the exsiting and newcoming members. Other than that, I've noticed that just a few mods have signatures in posts, so I guess signatures are restricted to anyone except staff, which is very good practice if you want to build a professional forum where content will be the first and most important thing people should care about. As for the portal, you haven't used it's full capacity, you should add more content or interesting widgets in order to make it more interactive and distinctive. All in all, it's a pleasure to browse through your forum, and in order to improve it, you should think about changing a few things I mentioned in this section of the review.
[/list]
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/m1Umu.png[/IMG]
[list]
[quote]Our users have posted a total of 1305315 messages
We have 1153 registered users[/quote]
I am stunned! Way to go! I have never seen any forumotion forum with this amount of posts. In spite of almost half of the posts is in the archive, there are more than 500k+ active posts which is huge number. And when you apply some maths, it means that average member has posted around 1000 message so fars. I mean, that's wicked, man. I admire your promoting skills, and keeping your members active. That tells a lot about dedication of administrators, mods and other forum's staff. Nothing to add more.
[/list]
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/dyy1U.png[/IMG]
[list]This is exact example of how forum's staff should be organized. Two admins are more than enough to handle the tech part of the forums, and 4 global mods are enough to handle the whole forum. I'm sure that forum that's active like this one requires a lot of moderation, but with enough dedication and organization, everything will be fine. I think your forum should be a role model for anyone who wants success in this field of Internet. Keep up the good work.
[/list]
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/wqlqz.png[/IMG]
[list]This forum is mostly football oriented, though it has some other interesting sections too, so it's main topic is not something innovative or original, but forum itself is. Although it doesn't have distincitve design, it's popular because it's usable, comfortable, and above all, it has valuable content which is essential to any forum. People say: "Don't judge book by it's cover", which is more than true, but in order for more people to hear about your forum, and in order to recognize it faster, please, work just a little bit on the details and eveything else will come along.
[right][i]Thanks for reading, and I hope you liked the review.[/i][/right]
[/list]
[/td][/tr][/table][table cellspacing=0 style="table-layout:fixed; width: 100%;"][tr][td style="text-align: justify; background: transparent; padding-left: 5px;"]
[/td][td width=110 height=97 style="background: url('http://i39.tinypic.com/6gbnzn.png');"][/td][/tr][/table]
|
Your review has been proofread and marked "complete". This review has been accepted and will now be moved to completed requests. 
