The Blog of Suedama

Review By: Suedama
Date: May 29, 2006
Original Review: Here

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Forum Name: The Uchiha Clan
Members & Posts: 6
Appearance: 2
Board Staff: 7
Layout: 2
Overall: 4.3 [Fair]

Comments:
Suggested Members for 1 Month: 40
Suggested Posts for 25 Members: 1000

The first thing a visitor would notice when viewing boards is the appearance of the board. You’ve chosen a very good skin, one that is often used for anime forums. The problem is the other graphics don’t match the skin well at all, or the other graphics are simply default graphics. When running a forum it is best to not have any default graphics at all, and here you have default statistics markers, default buttons, and default pips. You should definitely get some graphics to replace the default statistics markers and buttons. Even the team colors seem to be default colors, try to choose team colors that match the theme of the skin better. If you need help picking colors, try using the InvisionFree Skin Zone Color Chooser to get some non-default colors that match the skin well. The small pictures before a member’s name is interesting, but if you’re going to do that then you should make sure that the pictures have great quality and that the background of the picture is clear. The Cbox currently at the footer of the page makes the board look way too crowded. Just take the codes for the Cbox and post them in a pinned topic in a General forum. To do this just use dohtml tags and then paste the html within the tags. Lastly, the banner(s) of the forum is too large and has very poor quality. Try requesting a banner either here or at InvisionFree Skin Zone. Only use a single banner for the entire board, having a different banner every couple of refreshes prevents a consistency about the forum and passes the administration off as unorganized. You have quite a bit of work to do in this area, but it’ll improve the forum and its appearance score greatly.

I have to say that I have almost no idea how to figure out who your staff are… it really isn’t obvious because I don’t watch those anime shows a lot and I don’t know the vocabulary too well. You should make a topic in the Announcements forum that states exactly who of your clan is staff at the forum, this makes things easier on the guest that happens to be viewing your board. I tried my best to figure out who the staff was and I found some sort of list that I don’t really think is your staff list. On the list was a screen name Aznboy92. I searched for that screen name and saw nothing. Just make sure that your staff are very noticeable to guests and make sure that they are active and post, your board staff score and situation may improve.

With just a glance I can already say that your layout is way too large. There are some forums that don’t even have to exist, like the Applications forum and the Apply For Higher Rank forum. You can just have a single pinned topic in an Announcements forum where all new applicants post in the Applications topic and all new rank promotions posted in an Apply For A Higher Rank topic, instead of having these as forums. Another thing is it isn’t good to see a category with a single forum in it and it isn’t good to see a category with a ton of forums in it either. What you can do is combine all of the sports forums into a single forum called the Sports Forum. Simple enough isn’t it? We can condense the other forums as well, like combining the Signatures and Avatars, Fanart, and Photos into a single Art Gallery Forum of some kind. You can and should even combine all of the video gaming forums into a single Video Gaming forum. Since anime is the main feature of your board I don’t dare touch on that, except you really ought to include Naruto in the main Anime category. Also be sure that you only add more anime forums if that particular show is popular among your members, that way you have forums that are active as opposed to a ton of forums that have a few topics in them. You’d have to undergo some major changes regarding the organization of your forum, but I really do think that if you take these suggestions the your layout score will be much better. I apologize for the long wait, I hope that this review makes up for the time gap. Thank you for choosing InvisionFree Support, good luck with your forum!

Checklist:

• Music player shouldn’t be at header if anywhere
• News box on header makes forum too large
• Default statistics markers
• Default pips
• Default buttons
• Team colors don’t match
• Pictures before member names should have no background
• Put Cbox in a topic in a forum not at footer
• Banner too large request new
• Aznboy92 doesn’t exist?
• Staff situation looks ok
• Make staff more noticeable
• Official List forum not needed
• Applications forum not needed
• Apply For Higher Rank forum not needed
• Categories with 1 forum is bad
• Categories with lots of forums is bad
• Combine all sports forums into a single Sports Forum
• Combine Signatures and Avatars, Fanart, and Photos into a single forum
• Combine all video gaming forums into a single Video Gaming Forum
• Move Naruto forum to the Anime category

Review By: Santos
Date: May 21, 2006
Original Review: Here

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Forum Name: Stylish Layouts
Number of Members: 8
Number of Posts: 4
Quality of Staff: 2
Appearance: 6
Originality: 2
Activity: 3
Layout: 9
Overall: 4.9 [Average]

Comments:
Suggested Members for 2 Months: 75
Suggested Posts for 89 Members: 4900

I’m noticing a lot of familiar faces on the staff force at Stylish Layouts. Many of these people are fairly decent at being staff members, but because these members are staff at every other resource board you can imagine, there are some problems created. First I would like to point out those staff members who haven’t been on your forum in days: Metroid2005 hasn’t been on since May 7, 2006; Apostilas hasn’t been on since April 15, 2006; olafmelberg hasn’t be on since April 22, 2006; Pointwiz hasn’t been on since April 22, 2006; Syncratic hasn’t been on since May 14, 2006. Most of those staff members just listed are on the one team that is known for being active and posting: the Community Team. There is no need to have these inactive staff members on your board, they are doing you a disservice by wearing a staff title. You should demote all staff members who haven’t been online and all Community staff members who have a low amount of posts, perhaps under 50. Then you should hire some members that actually post and help around the community instead of those members that happen to be staff at some other big resource board. Perhaps see how Omari and Roxas would do on the Community Team, they seem to be the highest posters that aren’t staff. Lastly the one big service you offer lacks superb quality. I see only three layouts in your database, all of which don’t include detailed forum descriptions. Forum descriptions make up about half of a good layout, so if you’re going to offer layouts then at least include those. I have to say that I just don’t agree with a forum based on providing layouts. By showing members a list of layouts to use you are promoting that they use the layout. When everyone starts using this same layout then all forums start to look alike and will become unoriginal. I really don’t think layouts is the way to go, but at least take my other suggestions regarding staff. By doing this your quality of staff score will be much better.

I’ve seen this skin before, probably at InvisionFree Skin Zone a while back. The very first thing I noticed was that the borders of the skin don’t match the body of the skin at all. Sure both are shades of green, but it is kind of like me having a dark blue background and a flashing light shade of blue on top. It isn’t supposed to work. When I was browsing around I only saw a single default graphic, the ‘to the top’ graphic. You should make sure that when you install a skin and its buttons that you install everything there is. Overall I really think that you should just get a new skin. The skin has some excellent graphics-work in it, but because it’s all green it creates a sort of… ugly appeal if you don’t mind my saying so. Don’t take this as avoid green skins, quite the contrary. Most resource boards do indeed avoid green skins because they never seem to work, so if you find or create a good looking green skin by all means use it – it’ll help your board’s originality quite a bit. I do hope you get that custom skin sometime. As I said, the current skin just isn’t working too well. Try finding a new skin either here or at InvisionFree Skin Zone and your appearance score will be quite better.

And here is the enemy of all resource boards: the originality score. You should feel quite accomplished… You have two things that I have only seen at a couple of other forums: Forum Diaries and Layout suggestions. Everything else on your board completely lacks in originality. I understand that it’s tough trying to do things differently from other boards, and that is why an odd idea has been growing on me lately. Try coming up with ideas that are completely unrelated. Perhaps have a writing contest, a Battle of the Bands for the musicians on the board, sports charts for when football is in season. At this point anything at all will make the board more interesting, even things that are completely unrelated from resources. In fact I think that by having far-fetched ideas like these will actually make your originality much better and intrigue members into being a part of the community. It’s a crazy idea, but you ought to give it a shot.

Suggested Posts Per Day: 40
Suggested Active Members: 50

I should expect no less from a forum based on layouts, yours is nearly flawless. The only thing that I would change about it is to remove the “Forum Led By” text in the forum descriptions. For easy reference, here is the link to the code that removes this text. Lastly the way you present the sub-forum names in the main forum descriptions is a bit tacky. Perhaps if you make it something like “[ Completed | Trashed ]” for forums like the Layout Reports the forum descriptions will come off as more organized. Be sure to shorten the names of the sub-forums when adding those names to the main forum descriptions. You have received a deserved layout score for your forum. I hope that you take my other suggestions in to mind and act upon my comments. I do indeed thing that your forum will be much improved if you consider what I wrote in this review. I hope you find this of aid, thank you for choosing ZetaBoards Creative Styles.

Checklist:

• Metroid2005 hasn’t been on since May 7, 2006
• Apostilas community moderator with 4 posts
• Low posting community moderators
• Apostilas hasn’t been on since April 15, 2006
• olafmelberg hasn’t been on since April 22, 2006
• Pointwiz hasn’t been on since April 22, 2006
• Syncratic hasn’t been on since May 14, 2006
• Omari and Roxas decent posters (members)
• Layout/review thing lacks quality
• To The Top graphic is default
• Borders of skin don’t match body shade
• Team colors don’t work with skin
• Banned doesn’t match body shade
• Forum Diaries slightly original
• Layout ideas slightly original
• Everything else unoriginal
• No posts have been made today
• Get rid of Forum Led By:
• Sub-forum names in descriptions presented better