MyBB Community Forums

Hey Taylor,

Here are some of my thoughts that you could use to help improve your forum. I'm not trying to tell you what you should or shouldn't do but i've run a couple of pretty successful forums in the past and there are some mistakes i think you should rectify.

The first is the logo. Its decent but i think you could do better. Personally i don't like to see 3d logos at all. Just my personal preference.

The second is the marque. Marque is not a good thing to have on any site. It makes them look cheap and childish furthermore the color you have chosen for the text and border doesn't really go with the theme. It looks like you've just said color: blue; and border: 1px solid blue; without using any specific hex color codes from your theme. If you want to keep the marque at least make it blend. Then again maybe you wanted to attract peoples attention to it. Trust me, moving text does not need more attention. Anything moving will be the first thing a guest will see.

The theme is actually quite nice but you've spoilt it by adding text and login boxes to the panel at the top. Your just adding more content than is needed.

The top posters and latest threads boxes. Why are they at the top of the forum? Personally i think they should be at the bottom it looks cleaner. You click on the forum link and the first thing you see are forum stats, not the forums themselves.

Chat boxes on forums, i don't understand it. I've never seen a reason to put a chatbox and a forum on the same site. A shoutbox, yeah, okay. You can just shout hey to people or whatever. But your still loosing posts. I'd put money on it that it hardly gets used.

I think you've added way to many forums and sub forums. You should rethink the layout of those. Also some of your forums do not have a description. They might be self explanatory but it looks like you started with descriptions at the top and then you got bored and just made a ton of forums to compensate for it. Not only does it look lazy but you're making more work for yourself by having to many forums. Why? You should be actively posting in your forums to up the content, give people more to talk about and also give google more to index.

Conclusion

You've got a decent forum and it seems fairly active but you've over cumbered it with things you do not need. You've gotten lazy and skipped things that are important. And added things that are not important. But a menace to your site.

I hope you find my feedback useful, good luck with it.

Taylor simply dismisses any negative feedback, so you might have wasted your time.

I don't feel it's a waste of time trying to help someone. If he chooses not to listen to constructive criticism then thats his down fall.

(2012-06-23, 06:56 AM)BlackChaos Wrote: [ -> ]Just a few things I wanted to point out when I first visited your forum.

- The scrolling bar is distracting me a lot
- For a Gaming forum, you have an awful lot of general discussion sections. Some aren't even needed like "Jokes and Ranting".
- "Other Games" doesn't look like a good name for a section. Really, it kind of discourages me from joining if the forum only gives focus to FPS games and some other games.
- The Top Poster stats. Is it really needed on the top of the forum index? I'd suggest placing it at the bottom, but thats up to you.

Just a few things I had to point out.

Yeah the scrolling bar will be gone. I liked it but the rest do not so thats more important. Me and the members really enjoy the general topics so it would not be good to remove.

(2012-06-23, 03:34 PM)Heartless Wrote: [ -> ]Hey Taylor,

Here are some of my thoughts that you could use to help improve your forum. I'm not trying to tell you what you should or shouldn't do but i've run a couple of pretty successful forums in the past and there are some mistakes i think you should rectify.

The first is the logo. Its decent but i think you could do better. Personally i don't like to see 3d logos at all. Just my personal preference.

The second is the marque. Marque is not a good thing to have on any site. It makes them look cheap and childish furthermore the color you have chosen for the text and border doesn't really go with the theme. It looks like you've just said color: blue; and border: 1px solid blue; without using any specific hex color codes from your theme. If you want to keep the marque at least make it blend. Then again maybe you wanted to attract peoples attention to it. Trust me, moving text does not need more attention. Anything moving will be the first thing a guest will see.

The theme is actually quite nice but you've spoilt it by adding text and login boxes to the panel at the top. Your just adding more content than is needed.

The top posters and latest threads boxes. Why are they at the top of the forum? Personally i think they should be at the bottom it looks cleaner. You click on the forum link and the first thing you see are forum stats, not the forums themselves.

Chat boxes on forums, i don't understand it. I've never seen a reason to put a chatbox and a forum on the same site. A shoutbox, yeah, okay. You can just shout hey to people or whatever. But your still loosing posts. I'd put money on it that it hardly gets used.

I think you've added way to many forums and sub forums. You should rethink the layout of those. Also some of your forums do not have a description. They might be self explanatory but it looks like you started with descriptions at the top and then you got bored and just made a ton of forums to compensate for it. Not only does it look lazy but you're making more work for yourself by having to many forums. Why? You should be actively posting in your forums to up the content, give people more to talk about and also give google more to index.

Conclusion

You've got a decent forum and it seems fairly active but you've over cumbered it with things you do not need. You've gotten lazy and skipped things that are important. And added things that are not important. But a menace to your site.

I hope you find my feedback useful, good luck with it.

Thanks for all of that. Again the scrolling text will be removed. The logo is created by members not me. I let them do the gfx. Latest threads should always be at the top imo. Thanks man ill review some of these points.

Just reached 10k posts and over 700 members.

Why don't you put a link to your forum in your sig, and grt some free advertising by doing so, instead of using that space to passive aggressively express your anger towards a member you feel wronged you with fair criticism.

People check links in sigs of people that post intelligently. Heck, I was going to see where those 10k posts came from, but I'd have to go back to page one. Oh, never mind.

(2012-07-04, 09:11 PM)cappazushi Wrote: [ -> ]Why don't you put a link to your forum in your sig, and grt some free advertising by doing so, instead of using that space to passive aggressively express your anger towards a member you feel wronged you with fair criticism.

But I enjoy the fame

(2012-07-04, 09:11 PM)cappazushi Wrote: [ -> ]Why don't you put a link to your forum in your sig, and grt some free advertising by doing so, instead of using that space to passive aggressively express your anger towards a member you feel wronged you with fair criticism.

People check links in sigs of people that post intelligently. Heck, I was going to see where those 10k posts came from, but I'd have to go back to page one. Oh, never mind.

The posts came from members, herp derp. I had a cooler sig but someone got butthurt and removed it. Even though you guys are interested in me this thread is about my forum not me.

Very nice forum I would suggest getting the MyShoutbox plugin instead of the current chat system you are using

(2012-07-04, 11:00 PM)JamieJackson Wrote: [ -> ]Very nice forum I would suggest getting the MyShoutbox plugin instead of the current chat system you are using

Or just remove it completely.