Naruto RPG
First Impressions - Rating: Average
When I first visited your forum, I wasn't that impressed, in fact I had one of those "I've seen it before" scenarios. Now, I've reviewed many forums with the exact same theme as yours ("Naruto Role-Play), and I'm being serious, a lot of those forums. I've seen forums with black designs, red designs, blue designs, and yours is just one of those. At first glance, I have some suggestions that I believe you should take into consideration. First of all, your design is okay, but I would really like to see some nice new CSS3 properties in there. Your forum right now isn't that advanced from the others, and in order to be the best forum-wise, you have to ironically look the best. Now I like the way you blend your designs together, but it's not enough. Never stop working, never stop progressing. The key to success is hard work. I would like to see some nice CSS3 properties like I said before, for example: opacity, border radius', definitely some neat hovering tricks, and anything else you think would be nice. Your forum also lacks some neat web programming. I suggest that you try to study this further, and apply it to your forum so that your forum will truly stand out from the rest. This is all the advice I can give you for now, but this is only the first criteria.
Graphics & Layout - Rating: Average
To truly give the in-depth full review, I'll be reviewing your graphics individually grouped under the appropriate title, followed by a small summary of your layout.
Banner & Navigation:
Your banner looks very nice. It's new, it's sleek, and it appears to match with your current design. I like how your banner appropriately matches your forum's theme, however the wording needs to be a little bit better. Your wording is just one plain color with a stroke, I would like to see gloss and gradients. This would make your banner perfect for your forum, and would match the new look if you choose to follow what I said previously. On the other hand, your navigation images look very nice, and they look perfect. I believe that changing the wording style in your navigation bar won't be necessary since it would just look like it's too much or too fancy for a navigation bar. Keep them the way they are, but I do have one suggestion. I suggest that you go ahead and feel free to abuse CSS and add a neat hovering effect so that when you hover over one image, another appears. This would work perfect with your current navigation since it's only text.
Forum Images & Miscellaneous:
Your forum images are okay, but I believe that you should use a different image in the widgets and row titles. You use your forum's background image way too much, and you should only use it for one thing, the background. I suggest finding an image that interests you, and use it. Aside from those images, your forum images to tell whether the topic is new or old are very nice. I like the way you use the only-wording style for your images, and I suggest to keep this to a minimum (what it is now), and don't use it any further. Using the same style of images over and over can be unappealing. One more thing I would like to mention would be that I like the way you use an actual image to somewhat represent each forum.
Layout:
This is what killed this criteria's rating. The rating would have been a good, but your layout truly needs fixing. Your layout is not the best, and it makes your forum harder to navigate. What the members want is a fast forum in which they can get to the topic they like quickly and easily. Your forum needs to fix it's organization of categories and forums, and use the category to it's maximum potential. From what I see, you make one category, then one forum. This is not good, and should be fixed right away. To provide the easiest navigation possible, simply create no more than four-five categories with at least three-four forums in each. Make sure that the forums actually go under that category topic-wise, and don't forget to sue sub-forums when necessary. This will save scrolling space, and would make navigating a whole lot easier.
Forum Activity - Rating: Excellent
Your forum has an incredible amount of activity. With only 384 users, your forum accumulated 58,727 messages. This means that each member might've contributed 154 messages! This type of activity is very good, and will help your forum get known. What might contribute to even more activity would be to post daily updates, create monthly contests, and maybe do some giveaways. Do anything possible to get even more activity, remember always keep progressing.
Staff & Usergroups - Rating: Poor
First, you have way too many groups. I do realize that you are a role-play forum, but don't create groups, but ranks is what you need. Creating a lot of groups drives away the main two groups: Administrators and Moderators. I do suggest cutting down to no more than 6-7. Two is the perfect amount, three is great, four is good, five is okay, six is average, seven is a little below average. Too many groups causes disorder. Your moderators group is also ordered last which isn't good. To some people it means that all the other groups are better. I recommend changing the group order, and cutting down on groups.
Originality & Unique Quality - Rating: Average
Like I said, your forum isn't very unique as it gave me the "I've seen it before" scenario. Now aside from the overall design, your members and your activity do make your forum unique. Your forum just needs to stand out from the others, and to do this, I recommend you follow what I said in the "First Impressions" criteria.
To conclude, I would like to wish you and your forum the best of luck 

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[center][img]http://i37.servimg.com/u/f37/13/67/77/07/yfr214.png[/img]
[size=18][font=Trebuchet MS]Naruto RPG[/font][/size][/center]
[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 visited your forum, I wasn't that impressed, in fact I had one of those "I've seen it before" scenarios. Now, I've reviewed many forums with the exact same theme as yours ("Naruto Role-Play), and I'm being serious, a [u]lot[/u] of those forums. I've seen forums with black designs, red designs, blue designs, and yours is just one of those. At first glance, I have some suggestions that I believe you should take into consideration. First of all, your design is okay, but I would really like to see some nice new CSS3 properties in there. Your forum right now isn't that advanced from the others, and in order to be the best forum-wise, you have to ironically look the best. Now I like the way you blend your designs together, but it's not enough. Never stop working, never stop progressing. The key to success is hard work. I would like to see some nice CSS3 properties like I said before, for example: opacity, border radius', definitely some neat hovering tricks, and anything else you think would be nice. Your forum also lacks some neat web programming. I suggest that you try to study this further, and apply it to your forum so that your forum will truly stand out from the rest. This is all the advice I can give you for now, but this is only the first criteria.[/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]To truly give the in-depth full review, I'll be reviewing your graphics individually grouped under the appropriate title, followed by a small summary of your layout.
[u]Banner & Navigation[/u]:
Your banner looks very nice. It's new, it's sleek, and it appears to match with your current design. I like how your banner appropriately matches your forum's theme, however the wording needs to be a little bit better. Your wording is just one plain color with a stroke, I would like to see gloss and gradients. This would make your banner perfect for your forum, and would match the new look if you choose to follow what I said previously. On the other hand, your navigation images look very nice, and they look perfect. I believe that changing the wording style in your navigation bar won't be necessary since it would just look like it's too much or too fancy for a navigation bar. Keep them the way they are, but I do have one suggestion. I suggest that you go ahead and feel free to abuse CSS and add a neat hovering effect so that when you hover over one image, another appears. This would work perfect with your current navigation since it's only text.
[u]Forum Images & Miscellaneous[/u]:
Your forum images are okay, but I believe that you should use a different image in the widgets and row titles. You use your forum's background image way too much, and you should only use it for one thing, the background. I suggest finding an image that interests you, and use it. Aside from those images, your forum images to tell whether the topic is new or old are very nice. I like the way you use the only-wording style for your images, and I suggest to keep this to a minimum (what it is now), and don't use it any further. Using the same style of images over and over can be unappealing. One more thing I would like to mention would be that I like the way you use an actual image to somewhat represent each forum.
[u]Layout[/u]:
This is what killed this criteria's rating. The rating would have been a good, but your layout truly needs fixing. Your layout is not the best, and it makes your forum harder to navigate. What the members want is a fast forum in which they can get to the topic they like quickly and easily. Your forum needs to fix it's organization of categories and forums, and use the category to it's maximum potential. From what I see, you make one category, then one forum. This is not good, and should be fixed right away. To provide the easiest navigation possible, simply create no more than four-five categories with at least three-four forums in each. Make sure that the forums actually go under that category topic-wise, and don't forget to sue sub-forums when necessary. This will save scrolling space, and would make navigating a whole lot easier.[/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=red]Excellent[/color][/b]
[list][font=Trebuchet MS]Your forum has an incredible amount of activity. With only 384 users, your forum accumulated 58,727 messages. This means that each member might've contributed 154 messages! This type of activity is very good, and will help your forum get known. What might contribute to even more activity would be to post daily updates, create monthly contests, and maybe do some giveaways. Do anything possible to get even more activity, remember always keep progressing.[/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=olive]Poor[/color][/b]
[list][font=Trebuchet MS]First, you have way too many groups. I do realize that you are a role-play forum, but don't create groups, but ranks is what you need. Creating a lot of groups drives away the main two groups: Administrators and Moderators. I do suggest cutting down to no more than 6-7. Two is the perfect amount, three is great, four is good, five is okay, six is average, seven is a little below average. Too many groups causes disorder. Your moderators group is also ordered last which isn't good. To some people it means that all the other groups are better. I recommend changing the group order, and cutting down on groups.[/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=green]Average[/color][/b]
[list][font=Trebuchet MS]Like I said, your forum isn't very unique as it gave me the "I've seen it before" scenario. Now aside from the overall design, your members and your activity do make your forum unique. Your forum just needs to stand out from the others, and to do this, I recommend you follow what I said in the "First Impressions" criteria.
To conclude, I would like to wish you and your forum the best of luck ;)[/font][/list]
[center][img]http://i28.servimg.com/u/f28/14/18/91/65/c1010.png[/img][/center]
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