Supurge's Super Mario Bros. X Empire
Reviewed with the latest version of Google Chrome
 First Impressions - Rating: Average
When I first opened your site, I was drawn to the rather creatively designed home page. It's very cartoony and you can never go wrong with a cartoon theme because most of us have watched cartoons when we were young, so thus, no matter how many flaws a theme may have, it brings us back to our childhood. I did find the regular text in the HTML homepage is a little, well, regular and you could be better off with a more modern or nicer font or even just replace it with graphics. When I clicked the large image on the HTML welcome page, it brought me to the forum, which used the same image as the banner! It's not good to keep repeating graphics as it is repetitive and boring. You will hear more of the banner as the review continues. Your forum sections are dark blue with black text, and for me it was rather a little negative as it was not as the most preferable for reading. I did like the pixelated forum icons as it fits in with the cartoony theme and the other graphics. There are a lot of forum sections and that may be a little intimidating for some people and you may lose a little activity - simplicity is nearly always a good thing. Also, your Portal could be deleted since you have nearly all the info you need on the main page and you have a HTML homepage already. Otherwise, first impressions are not too bad but not quite up to a Good rating yet. Keep working on organization and design.
 Graphics & Layout - Rating: Average
As said before, your forum banner should not be re-used on the HTML page. It will give members more surprise and pleasure in seeing different graphics for different areas. The navigation bar is different but quite interesting. It's a little too tall for my taste, but it's good and you could do with it. I said I liked the pixelated icons and buttons before, but as I scroll through the site, the pixelated designs get a little old quick. It just doesn't seem very modern or very high quality. This may be just more of a personal taste as perhaps some people may find it better and I don't know enough about the forum to make a complete judgment on the pixelated graphics. I'd like to note that you could still have a great cartoony theme without the image quality being 1990s.  I was badgered by the flashing "!" for the Report a Post button - the flashing looks horrible when every post has a flashing exclamation mark. All the warning bars in members' profiles don't look very good for the theme either as it is again the repetition of things over and over. Perhaps you should try just text/numbers instead? I did like your use of Javascript and that was a plus. Also, watch for the colors of your texts throughout the board. Since your background is mainly blue/dark blue, some of the texts in different areas (profiles, topics, etc.) are obscured. Moving on to forum layout, I said above that you have "a lot of forum sections and that may be a little intimidating for some people." Some of your forum sections are either have very little topics or very little activity. An excellent forum has forum sections with new content everyday. See if you can compress forums together and eliminate unneeded sections. Overall, you could definitely work on improving user profiles and organizing the forum sections.
 Forum Activity - Rating: Average
Since the forum is about 7-8 months old and is based on Nintendo and gaming, I think the activity is average. Post count is pretty bad considering the number of members and people online, while the number of members can certainly be higher if you do a active advertising campaign. There is a plethora of gamers and Nintendo fans out there, I recommend you actively seek these people who will be more than happy to post high quality content on your forum. I was impressed by the fact that the most users ever online was 812, which is huge considering the member count (474). There must be lots of guests and it's quite an achievement for a forum with such activity. Again, your post count is pretty low and that can be fixed with bringing more active members and reducing the number of forum sections as said above.
 Staff & Usergroups - Rating: Good
I see that youre quite active, but considering users in last 24 hours, I think that theres a bit too much usergroups and staff at the moment. You don't really need an extra usergroup for the founder, since you could use CSS to change his username color. Many of the usergroup colors are also hard to see in the blue theme. But as I dont have experience with using your forum at all, I think that you should stick to your own staff picking policy. Thus, the grade is Good (I also considered the group organization according to forum sections).
 Originality & Unique Quality - Rating: Good
Your forum definitely possesses a great level of uniqueness. Even if the graphics could use some rework, they are still quite unique and original and maybe might even be an acquired taste. You should work on the suggestions I made and then your forum will have the potential of becoming quite successful.
Regards and best of luck,
Empire_1
Would you like to share your review on your forum, on another forum, or with your friends? Then here you go... grab the code!
- Code:
[img]http://i37.servimg.com/u/f37/13/67/77/07/red12.png[/img] [size=16][b][color=#932222]First Impressions[/color][/b][/size] - [b]Rating: [color=green]Average[/color][/b]
[list][font=Trebuchet MS]When I first opened your site, I was drawn to the rather creatively designed home page. It's very cartoony and you can never go wrong with a cartoon theme because most of us have watched cartoons when we were young, so thus, no matter how many flaws a theme may have, it brings us back to our childhood. I did find the regular text in the HTML homepage is a little, well, regular and you could be better off with a more modern or nicer font or even just replace it with graphics. When I clicked the large image on the HTML welcome page, it brought me to the forum, which used the same image as the banner! It's not good to keep repeating graphics as it is repetitive and boring. You will hear more of the banner as the review continues. Your forum sections are dark blue with black text, and for me it was rather a little negative as it was not as the [i]most[/i] preferable for reading. I did like the pixelated forum icons as it fits in with the cartoony theme and the other graphics. There are a lot of forum sections and that may be a little intimidating for some people and you may lose a little activity - simplicity is nearly always a good thing. Also, your Portal could be deleted since you have nearly all the info you need on the main page and you have a HTML homepage already. Otherwise, first impressions are not too bad but not quite up to a Good rating yet. Keep working on organization and design.[/font][/list]
[img]http://i37.servimg.com/u/f37/13/67/77/07/purple11.png[/img] [size=16][b][color=#9507c9]Graphics & Layout[/color][/b][/size] - [b]Rating: [color=green]Average[/color][/b]
[list][font=Trebuchet MS]As said before, your forum banner should not be re-used on the HTML page. It will give members more surprise and pleasure in seeing different graphics for different areas. The navigation bar is different but quite interesting. It's a little too tall for my taste, but it's good and you could do with it. I said I liked the pixelated icons and buttons before, but as I scroll through the site, the pixelated designs get a little old quick. It just doesn't seem very modern or very high quality. This may be just more of a personal taste as perhaps some people may find it better and I don't know enough about the forum to make a complete judgment on the pixelated graphics. I'd like to note that you could still have a great cartoony theme without the image quality being 1990s. :P I was badgered by the flashing "!" for the Report a Post button - the flashing looks horrible when every post has a flashing exclamation mark. All the warning bars in members' profiles don't look very good for the theme either as it is again the repetition of things over and over. Perhaps you should try just text/numbers instead? I did like your use of Javascript and that was a plus. Also, watch for the colors of your texts throughout the board. Since your background is mainly blue/dark blue, some of the texts in different areas (profiles, topics, etc.) are obscured. Moving on to forum layout, I said above that you have "a lot of forum sections and that may be a little intimidating for some people." Some of your forum sections are either have very little topics or very little activity. An excellent forum has forum sections with new content everyday. See if you can compress forums together and eliminate unneeded sections. Overall, you could definitely work on improving user profiles and organizing the forum sections. [/font][/list]
[img]http://i37.servimg.com/u/f37/13/67/77/07/orange12.png[/img] [size=16][b][color=#e2a718]Forum Activity[/color][/b][/size] - [b]Rating: [color=green]Average[/color][/b]
[list][font=Trebuchet MS]Since the forum is about 7-8 months old and is based on Nintendo and gaming, I think the activity is average. Post count is pretty bad considering the number of members and people online, while the number of members can certainly be higher if you do a active advertising campaign. There is a plethora of gamers and Nintendo fans out there, I recommend you actively seek these people who will be more than happy to post high quality content on your forum. I was impressed by the fact that the most users ever online was 812, which is huge considering the member count (474). There must be lots of guests and it's quite an achievement for a forum with such activity. Again, your post count is pretty low and that can be fixed with bringing more active members and reducing the number of forum sections as said above.[/font][/list]
[img]http://i37.servimg.com/u/f37/13/67/77/07/blue11.png[/img] [size=16][b][color=#0f6ec7]Staff & Usergroups[/color][/b][/size] - [b]Rating: [color=blue]Good[/color][/b]
[list][font=Trebuchet MS]I see that youre quite active, but considering users in last 24 hours, I think that theres a bit too much usergroups and staff at the moment. You don't really need an extra usergroup for the founder, since you could use CSS to change his username color. Many of the usergroup colors are also hard to see in the blue theme. But as I dont have experience with using your forum at all, I think that you should stick to your own staff picking policy. Thus, the grade is Good (I also considered the group organization according to forum sections).[/font][/list]
[img]http://i37.servimg.com/u/f37/13/67/77/07/green11.png[/img] [size=16][b][color=#3acd0d]Originality & Unique Quality[/color][/b][/size] - [b]Rating: [color=blue]Good[/color][/b]
[list][font=Trebuchet MS]Your forum definitely possesses a great level of uniqueness. Even if the graphics could use some rework, they are still quite unique and original and maybe might even be an acquired taste. You should work on the suggestions I made and then your forum will have the potential of becoming quite successful.[/font][/list]
[center][img]http://i28.servimg.com/u/f28/14/18/91/65/33618610.png[/img][/center]
|
Review complete and moved to the official review archives. 
