Royal empires leage review #2

Jul

2009

Permission to be greedy and be the 2nd person to have two reviews please Cool

Name of the Forum: Royal empires League United
Address: http://relforum.forumn.net/
What categories would you like the reviewer to review? Full review please.

MrMario currently has an account there Wink

1 Darren1, on 21/07/2009 at 03h44

Pacific or Veljko; who will get this review?

2 Darren1, on 22/07/2009 at 06h41

I wonder if testJal is going to be done before mine as well Question

3 Pacific, on 22/07/2009 at 11h40

Tagged

4 Pacific, on 22/07/2009 at 13h37

Royal empires League United

First Impression (4.5/10)

Aestheticism (3/5): Generally the index of the forum looks good (+1). The forum news are an interesting and unique addition to your forum. I haven't seen it before in a forum and it helps the visitors/guests by showing that you care and the members in the same way (+1). The picture next to each forum are not bad (+1), but you should use transparent pictures of better quality and in the same size (-1). Also, you should have a picture in all forums and subforums, not most of them (-1).
Suggestions: Create, request or find a picture for each forum and subforum. Don't forget to use some of the same size and at top quality. Use trasnparent ones, not with white background. Work on them, don't use ones copied from other websites or from pictures. Don't forget to update the news weekly to inform both guests and members about the current events, discussions, competitions etc.
Activity (1.5/5): Most of the forums have posts and some of them have more than 1000 ones (+1). Despite that fact, some forums have less than 100 posts and 2 forums are completely empty (-1). There are less than 30,000 messages (-1) and less than 200 members (-1). No one else was online when I visited your forum (-0.5), but someone logged in while I was online (+0.5)
Suggestions: Even though some forums may be new, you should post on them to persuade members to post too. There are enough members and posts, but try to convnce members to be online more time.

Graphics (6.5/10)

Banner, Buttons, Ranks etc. (2.5/5): Your banner looks different from other banners I have seen (+1), but I don't think that it is attractive (-1). I liked most of the buttons, because of their colours, their quality, their transparency and their style (+1), I think that the ones in the Inbox, Sentbox, Outbox and Savebox do not match with the theme, although I like them (-1). To tell you the truth, this: reminds me of this: . As stated before, some of the buttons of the forums are not a good choice like this: or this: (I won't post them all, because they are too many) (-0.5), but I liked this: and this: ones much (+0.5).
Suggestions: You may want to change the banner with one with the same information but something more attractive, it isn't vital though. You should keep most buttons but change the one stated before (this one), with something that matches better with the other buttons and the forum colors (don't forget the forum's theme is dark). Don't forget the suggestions made above (First Impression > Aestheticism) about the button of each forum.
Colours (4/5): Generally the colors of the forum match well each other (+1), as well as with the buttons of the forum (+1). The text color is clear and it is easy to read what is written in the index and in the topics & posts (+1). I liked the different colours of the different groups (administrators, moderators etc.) (+1), but the color of the VIPs and the Members is the same and it is difficult to understand who is a VIP and who a normal member (-1).
Suggestions: Change the color of the VIPs or the Members or both to use different colours for each group, unless you want them to be the same.

Members Activity Staff (6/15)

Members (1/5): There are less than 200 members and the forum is old (-1). Only 10 members logged in in the last 24 hours (-1). There were members and guests online, while I was in the forum, doing the review (+1). 1/2 of the members have never posted anything (-1). 1/5 of the members have never logged in (-1).
Suggestions: Persuade members to visit more frequently the forum and post more. Don't leave them leave without posting anything. It is very important!
Activity (2/5): There are more less than 30,000 posts and the forum is old (-1). There were new posts while I was online (+1). The "Today's active topics" list contain less than 20 topic by now (-1). The posts per member ratio is 141, very high (+1). The posts per day ratio is 42.16, very low (-1).
Suggestions: As stated before, convince members to post more (not only the active members but the inactive ones too by newsletters and pms). Post in many different topics to make members post there. Start new topics and be active, that's how other members will post too.
Staff (3/5): Many staff members have may posts and contribute actively to the forum (+1). Others do not have so many posts, but all of them visited the forum recntly, that's good (+1). You have enough staff groups, not too many, with different group colours (+1). You have a members group, something very important to send mass pms but not all the members are in that group (-1). The color of the VIPs and the Members group is the same (-1)
Suggestions:Add all the members to the Members group and don't forget the suggestions in Graphics > Colours.

Advantages:

Nice buttons
Forum News
Clean index and colours
Active staff
High posts per member ratio

Disadvantages:

Bad forum icons (pictures next to each section)
Less than 100 posts a day...
1/2 of the members have never posted
1/5 of the members have never logged in
Low activity

Final Score: 17/35 or 9/20

Some suggestions/ways to make your more forum successful:

Advertising/Promoting:

You can promote your forum in the Forum Promotion section of the Support forum. You can also promote in many other Forum Promotion forums that can be found in the web.

Activity:

You should increase the activity by organising some activities:
- Interesting topics
- Contests - Competitions
- Discussions in the Chatbox
- Games

Graphics:

You can ask for graphics here and you can search our great gallery here!

I hope the best for your forum. Good luck! Very Happy

Thank you for using this service,
Pacific for Forumotion

5 Darren1, on 22/07/2009 at 14h02

Some people aren't in the members group .. Must of been the 2 that registered in the past few hours, I wasn't online to fix it (I was working it) and Todd had fixed it while you were doing your review Wink

As for the PM Button; I fixed that when we changed our icons.

As for the low activity; were a dying bread - As in were an Age of Empires 3 (mainly) clan/forum, we ahve now reached to other consoles, and games - But with nill success

Our members, and VIP's are the same colour just to make the members feel less apart from the VIP's, as the VIP's have their own additional sub section.

The chatbox, yea, umm, It's basically there for looks Wink

I'm not going to go and analyze and give reasons for everything you have done.

Some surprising things there, that well get right onto working on correcting - Tomorrow morning when we can discuss it further.

Thanks for your review!
It's appreciated, but I think you have a few too many BBCode's active in ur post fufufu

6 Pacific, on 22/07/2009 at 15h49

OK no problem
Solved