Post by Cameron on Jul 13, 2011 15:15:18 GMT -5
This is a review that we received on July 10th, 2011. We received this review from phpBBCommunities. This review was created by Gandall.
Click the the following spoiler to see the review:
Your Review!
CMT Sports Forum
Image Design
- Banner, including alignment. 2 Out of 2
- Choice of Style 2 Out of 4
- Colour Choice 2 Out of 3
- Professionalism of Design 1 Out of 2
- Does the Style Suit the Site? 1 Out of 2
- General 'feel' of the Style 2 Out of 3
- Free Style, or Custom Style 1 Out of 4
Comments
The banner is simple, yet effective. It has relevant images on and it is clearly laid out. It has an image of a ball from 3 different sports games which i find really good as it represennts the different sports that you talk about, as well as others. The design is very simple but it is light and I think that the decicion to make it light is a great idea. It is a light hearted forum that you can be laid back on. It would be a good idea to but a background colour on it. Just to make it look better than a plain white background because at the moment it looks as if you have just left it with a basic theme.
Image Technical
- Use of phpBB's Default Features 1 Out of 2
- General Customization 1 Out of 3
- Domain Name 1 Out of 2
-- Related to Niche 1 Out of 1
-- Correct Spelling 1 Out of 1
-- TLD 1 Out of 2
- Uses full phpBB, not Free Hosted phpBB 1 Out of 3
Comments
The domain name is a "Proboards" domain name. This makes it look a little bit unprofessional and new members will see that and may be a bit reluctant to join because of that. When you advertise, you will put the link down and people may thing that it is not worth joining because you do not have a custom domain name so I would suggest getting a .com domain. There is no customisation on this board as far as I can tell and I believe that there is a lot that can be done. If you do not know how to do certain things, you should hire a technician to do it for you. They will code the theme and mods and make it look more professional. I like the way that they staff titles are related to sports, for example, "Manager" This shows some customisation. You also have a chat box which whill let you interact with the members and a chat room. I like your descriptions on the forums, it makes the members think that the forum is different to other forums which is what you need to make them think because you need to be different to succeed against the other sports forums.
Image Layout 2 Out of 4
- Placement of Ads etc. 1 Out of 2
- Forum Index Layout, including Categories, Forums and Sub Boards. 3 Out of 4
- Navigation 2 Out of 2
- Organisation, is everything organised etc. 2 Out of 2
Comments
The ads are right at the top and they are the first thing you see. They are very "in your face" and that may drive people away from the forum. You may want to move the ads to the bottom of the forum. the layout is good but again, the style is boring and it has to be change if you are going to make your forum become really popular. people do not want a boring theme, they want something new and different. I saw this at the bottom of your forum "This Board Hosted For FREE By ProBoards." This will limit your customisation ability and it will show the members that you are not hosting it yourself. I suggest that you do get hosting when you can as people like this and you can customise it a lot more. Your forums are organised very well, they are all in the right place. Maybe instead of having "Other Sports" you could add new forums for "Tennis" "Boxing" or "Golf" and then you will have more forums, rather than one forum with all the otehr sports in. You could have "Latest news" in each of them as well where you talk about the latest news for each sport. This will start of loads of conversations and increase your post count.
Image Content and Professionalism
- Spelling and Grammar 3 Out of 3
- Quality of Content 2 Out of 4
- Uniqueness 1 Out of 4
- Post Relevancy, including ratio of On Topic to Off Topic Posts 3 Out of 4
- Professionalism 2 Out of 4
Comments
This forum is not unique. It is the same as any other sports forum. The posts are relevant to the topic though and this is a good thing. It does not look professional, it looks like it is hosted as it is and this is not too good really if you are looking to get popular. No-one likes a forum that is pre-hosted, it's just not professional. The quality is okay. You can add loads more to the forum.
Image Statistics and Activity
- Posts, Threads and Members Per Day. 1 Out of 3
- Activity relating to the age of the Site. 1 Out of 3
- Are posts evenly spread out between all categories. 2 Out of 2
- Member Activity 2 Out of 2
- Member to Member Interactivity 2 Out of 3
Comments
This is a good section. Your member activity is good, people keep coming back and there are members that have been members for a long time and you reward them by giving them the title, "Legend" ehich is great member interactivity and I think that helps to keep them coming back. keep this up, make custom ranks and custom user titles so that the members feel that they are being thought about and they will like that and tell other people about it. It also helps to make your forum be more unique. If the staff care about their members then the forum will go far. You have got 60,865 posts overall and this is not the best for a forum of this age but it is okay. You need more forums for people to post in as stated before, that should sort that issue out.
Image Staff
- Interaction with Staff and Members 2 Out of 3
- Is the forum clean of Spam etc. 2 Out of 2
- Are the Staff doing their jobs? / Being Active2 Out of 2
- Amount of Staff, Including Amount of Staff Compared to Members. 2 Out of 2
Comments
I could not see any spam on the forum which suggests that the forum is spam free. There are quite a lot of staff members and their interaction between members seems to be good. Was reading the rules and how you told your members about the rules and it is very professional but in a way that members will find interestinga s well. For exapmle instead od saying "Spam will not be tolerated" You said, "Spam: Yes, spam. Spam will not be tolerated. We at CSF really do not like spam. Spam makes forums look bad from a potential member's point of view." This tells the members why spam is not tolerated.
Image Features, MODs etc.
- Good Use of MODs 2 Out of 3
- Custom MODs, Add Ons 1 Out of 3
- Unique Features to the Site 2 Out of 3
Comments
There is a cash mod on the forum which encourages users to post. Also, you have called the staff members "Coach" etc. This makes the forum unique and brings in the members. You do not have many mods though and it could have loads more. Make sure that you do not use too many though otherwise the forum will look a mess. Maybe get some SEO mods to boost your search engine optimisation. You could get a rotating affiliates ad bar on the bottom of the forum.
Image General Feedback
The forum needs a background as this will make it look nicer for new members. You could also increase the amount of competitions taht you do, eg a posting competition would be good because it will bring in members and increase the post count of teh forum and teh members. You could also put in the new forums that I suggested before. This will make there be more to post about and again, increase the post count of your forum and it's members. Look for mods that are relevant, there may even be sports mods. This will make new members more likely to join. The forums doing good but can be doing so much better. Find a designer or get a custom design made for the skin, this will realy help
Image Suggestions and Improvements
there are some things that will make this forum much better. Firstly Get a new background that is more colourful. You should also get more relevant mods,
hold more competitions, get a selection of skins, update your members more on forum announcements and put new forums in.
Final Score: 72 Out of 100
This was a pretty nice review, there were a few typos, etc though, but that's obviously going to happen when you type up such a huge post. The review may get a bit confusing as the review template is actually meant to be used on forums that are on the phpBB forum software.
Click the the following spoiler to see the review:
Your Review!
CMT Sports Forum
Image Design
- Banner, including alignment. 2 Out of 2
- Choice of Style 2 Out of 4
- Colour Choice 2 Out of 3
- Professionalism of Design 1 Out of 2
- Does the Style Suit the Site? 1 Out of 2
- General 'feel' of the Style 2 Out of 3
- Free Style, or Custom Style 1 Out of 4
Comments
The banner is simple, yet effective. It has relevant images on and it is clearly laid out. It has an image of a ball from 3 different sports games which i find really good as it represennts the different sports that you talk about, as well as others. The design is very simple but it is light and I think that the decicion to make it light is a great idea. It is a light hearted forum that you can be laid back on. It would be a good idea to but a background colour on it. Just to make it look better than a plain white background because at the moment it looks as if you have just left it with a basic theme.
Image Technical
- Use of phpBB's Default Features 1 Out of 2
- General Customization 1 Out of 3
- Domain Name 1 Out of 2
-- Related to Niche 1 Out of 1
-- Correct Spelling 1 Out of 1
-- TLD 1 Out of 2
- Uses full phpBB, not Free Hosted phpBB 1 Out of 3
Comments
The domain name is a "Proboards" domain name. This makes it look a little bit unprofessional and new members will see that and may be a bit reluctant to join because of that. When you advertise, you will put the link down and people may thing that it is not worth joining because you do not have a custom domain name so I would suggest getting a .com domain. There is no customisation on this board as far as I can tell and I believe that there is a lot that can be done. If you do not know how to do certain things, you should hire a technician to do it for you. They will code the theme and mods and make it look more professional. I like the way that they staff titles are related to sports, for example, "Manager" This shows some customisation. You also have a chat box which whill let you interact with the members and a chat room. I like your descriptions on the forums, it makes the members think that the forum is different to other forums which is what you need to make them think because you need to be different to succeed against the other sports forums.
Image Layout 2 Out of 4
- Placement of Ads etc. 1 Out of 2
- Forum Index Layout, including Categories, Forums and Sub Boards. 3 Out of 4
- Navigation 2 Out of 2
- Organisation, is everything organised etc. 2 Out of 2
Comments
The ads are right at the top and they are the first thing you see. They are very "in your face" and that may drive people away from the forum. You may want to move the ads to the bottom of the forum. the layout is good but again, the style is boring and it has to be change if you are going to make your forum become really popular. people do not want a boring theme, they want something new and different. I saw this at the bottom of your forum "This Board Hosted For FREE By ProBoards." This will limit your customisation ability and it will show the members that you are not hosting it yourself. I suggest that you do get hosting when you can as people like this and you can customise it a lot more. Your forums are organised very well, they are all in the right place. Maybe instead of having "Other Sports" you could add new forums for "Tennis" "Boxing" or "Golf" and then you will have more forums, rather than one forum with all the otehr sports in. You could have "Latest news" in each of them as well where you talk about the latest news for each sport. This will start of loads of conversations and increase your post count.
Image Content and Professionalism
- Spelling and Grammar 3 Out of 3
- Quality of Content 2 Out of 4
- Uniqueness 1 Out of 4
- Post Relevancy, including ratio of On Topic to Off Topic Posts 3 Out of 4
- Professionalism 2 Out of 4
Comments
This forum is not unique. It is the same as any other sports forum. The posts are relevant to the topic though and this is a good thing. It does not look professional, it looks like it is hosted as it is and this is not too good really if you are looking to get popular. No-one likes a forum that is pre-hosted, it's just not professional. The quality is okay. You can add loads more to the forum.
Image Statistics and Activity
- Posts, Threads and Members Per Day. 1 Out of 3
- Activity relating to the age of the Site. 1 Out of 3
- Are posts evenly spread out between all categories. 2 Out of 2
- Member Activity 2 Out of 2
- Member to Member Interactivity 2 Out of 3
Comments
This is a good section. Your member activity is good, people keep coming back and there are members that have been members for a long time and you reward them by giving them the title, "Legend" ehich is great member interactivity and I think that helps to keep them coming back. keep this up, make custom ranks and custom user titles so that the members feel that they are being thought about and they will like that and tell other people about it. It also helps to make your forum be more unique. If the staff care about their members then the forum will go far. You have got 60,865 posts overall and this is not the best for a forum of this age but it is okay. You need more forums for people to post in as stated before, that should sort that issue out.
Image Staff
- Interaction with Staff and Members 2 Out of 3
- Is the forum clean of Spam etc. 2 Out of 2
- Are the Staff doing their jobs? / Being Active2 Out of 2
- Amount of Staff, Including Amount of Staff Compared to Members. 2 Out of 2
Comments
I could not see any spam on the forum which suggests that the forum is spam free. There are quite a lot of staff members and their interaction between members seems to be good. Was reading the rules and how you told your members about the rules and it is very professional but in a way that members will find interestinga s well. For exapmle instead od saying "Spam will not be tolerated" You said, "Spam: Yes, spam. Spam will not be tolerated. We at CSF really do not like spam. Spam makes forums look bad from a potential member's point of view." This tells the members why spam is not tolerated.
Image Features, MODs etc.
- Good Use of MODs 2 Out of 3
- Custom MODs, Add Ons 1 Out of 3
- Unique Features to the Site 2 Out of 3
Comments
There is a cash mod on the forum which encourages users to post. Also, you have called the staff members "Coach" etc. This makes the forum unique and brings in the members. You do not have many mods though and it could have loads more. Make sure that you do not use too many though otherwise the forum will look a mess. Maybe get some SEO mods to boost your search engine optimisation. You could get a rotating affiliates ad bar on the bottom of the forum.
Image General Feedback
The forum needs a background as this will make it look nicer for new members. You could also increase the amount of competitions taht you do, eg a posting competition would be good because it will bring in members and increase the post count of teh forum and teh members. You could also put in the new forums that I suggested before. This will make there be more to post about and again, increase the post count of your forum and it's members. Look for mods that are relevant, there may even be sports mods. This will make new members more likely to join. The forums doing good but can be doing so much better. Find a designer or get a custom design made for the skin, this will realy help
Image Suggestions and Improvements
there are some things that will make this forum much better. Firstly Get a new background that is more colourful. You should also get more relevant mods,
hold more competitions, get a selection of skins, update your members more on forum announcements and put new forums in.
Final Score: 72 Out of 100
This was a pretty nice review, there were a few typos, etc though, but that's obviously going to happen when you type up such a huge post. The review may get a bit confusing as the review template is actually meant to be used on forums that are on the phpBB forum software.