I got an awesome idea… I just need Nicola to get online so I can tell someone it… ahem… hint hint…

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

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

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Forum: ZetaBoards Mansion
Number of Members: 10
Number of Posts: 10
Quality of Staff: 6
Appearance: 5
Originality: 1
Activity: 9
Layout: 7
Overall: 6.9 [Average]

Comments:
Suggested Members for 1 Month: 50
Suggested Posts for 100 Members: 5000

The services that ZetaBoards Mansion offers is nothing special… It is hard to make a board seem unique since all resource boards seem alike today, but what you can do is provide exceptionally good services. This is where the quality of staff comes in. I checked to see what the quality of reviews and skins are and I am sad to say that they aren’t too great. The skin requests filed use a style of skinning that is long ‘out of fashion.’ You might as well not offer skin requests until you have an established skinning team and database. For reviews you need to make sure that you not only point out the mistakes of the forum but also provide specific details to how to fix the errors. In fact you have a review team that has yet to write any reviews… Get Ambience up and writing so that your review team can be better established, or just hire some more reviewers that are good. The most curious issue about your board is that you have a Community Team with low amounts of posts. Typically those on the Community Team are known for posting a lot and being helpful throughout the forums. I suggest that you demote those on the community Team with less than 100 posts and promote the Very Important Members Woozie and Millar if their attitudes are acceptable. That should make your Community Team look better than it is currently, no offense to those already on the team. I know that Default is on the team but something tells me that she was just promoted because she is staff here and she runs InvisionFree Management, much like the reason Jay was promoted…? Overall you should make sure that your staff perform with top quality and that they are active, so make it a policy that staff members who are not active will be demoted. With some changes in the system, the quality of staff score will be better.

I’m not all that impressed by the appearance of your forum. The first thing I noticed was that all of the shades of green do not match with each other. There’s dark greens and light greens all over the place which creates a not so pleasant look in my opinion. I suggest getting a different skin that is more complex. A resource board of all forums shouldn’t have such a simple skin. I understand that Default might have given you that skin, so be sure to thank her for her contributions to the forum whether you decide to change the skin or not. It is also brought to my attention that there are some graphics from another skin being used on this one, for example the pips. Well perhaps those graphics are specifically for this skin, but it doesn’t appear that way to me. I really think that getting a new skin and a graphics set that matches it perfectly would be best. See if your skin team can make a skin, if not then check out what you can find a Creative Styles or at InvisionFree Skin Zone. I really think that a new skin would better improve your appearance score.

I have to be quite frank about your board’s originality… there is none. This is the hardest area of running a resource board, it is near impossible to be original. You should gather all of your staff and brainstorm of new ideas constantly. You might even do well to hire a staff force simply to think of new ideas. In fact you should bring in some features that are completely unrelated to forum resources, just to make things interesting. Just do anything you can to make your forum more original, whether it means writing news articles or having writing contests or a photography contest. Anything would help at this point if another board isn’t doing something similar. Keep brainstorming of new ideas and your originality score will be improved.

Suggested Posts Per Day: 50
Suggested Active Members: 58

There is only one suggestion that I can give regarding the layout of your forum. Instead of having the graphics and skins categories separate, you should combine them both into a Styles Residence category. Merge the member and staff skin forums into a single Skin Database. Then merge the member and staff graphics forums into a single Graphics Database. Then delete the Skin Requests forum, replacing it with a Graphics Requests forum. Lastly combine the Graphics and Skin Department forums into a single Styles Department forum. Put the remaining forums of the two categories into one category, thus making the layout more condensed. This isn’t really a lot of changes, but it will make your layout substantially smaller and better organized if the staff forces can enforce it well. I think that your board is up to the challenge, I hope that you find my suggestions helpful. Good luck with your board!

Checklist:

• Maintitle doesn’t match
• Shades of green don’t match
• Team colors don’t match
• Reviews quality lacking
• Skin requests could be better
• Ads Team not active
• VIMs with low posts
• Community Team low posts
• Mixing skins
• Nothing original
• 64 members with 0 posts
• 170 posts today
• Combine graphics and skins categories

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

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Forum Name: CCXtreme
Members & Posts: 3
Appearance: 2
Board Staff: 4
Layout: 3
Overall: 3 [Fair]

Comments:
Suggested Members for 19 Days: 20
Suggested Posts for 11 Members: 500

I have to say that I don’t particularly like the skin that you’ve chosen to use, but that isn’t what gave you such a low appearance score. Throughout the board you use graphics that are from other skin or graphics that just don’t blend in well with the skin you are currently using. The forum markers, for example, simply do not blend well with the skin. Then you have statistics markers and buttons from another skin that you are using with this one. On top of that you use some default buttons and default pips. Try to find a completely new skin either here at IF Support or at InvisionFree Skin Zone. Then if the skin doesn’t have a graphics set to accompany it you ought to request the graphics set at a resource forum like IF Support. Once that is all done you should request that someone makes a banner that matches the skin, because currently your banner is not good. I have to say that it looks like you created it with Microsoft Paint, which is a fine program but typically creates works of art that don’t have such great quality. Lastly I suggest that you get rid of the announcements box on the header of the page. It is an ok code but by using these site add-ons you make the header of the page look larger than it has to be.

I can’t really say much on your board staff score because the board is very new and doesn’t have very many staff members. But for those staff members that you do have you need to make sure that they are active and posting. The member honda26 is currently one of your staff members, but he or she hasn’t been online since May 17, 2006. On top of that the member has 5 posts. The other moderator and administrator have 8 and 11 posts respectively. The most important thing that needs to be done is to get your staff members posting. Require that they start topics and post in topics as if there were no tomorrow, because as soon as they start posting other members will start posting. A good appearance and layout help forum activity as well.

Layout-wise I can think of a couple easy ways to condense your forum to only 3 categories. It appears to me that the theme of your board is sports, so we’re going to have that category make the body of the page. Start the layout with The News category. In this category you should have three forums titled Announcements, Suggestions, and Contests. All other forums in your first category you can delete. Name the second category Sports Sector or some form of that. Put the basic sports forums in this category. For example, you can add Football, Baseball, Basketball, and Hockey, or any other set of popular sports, followed but a forum called Other. That way you include the major sports and then an area to put other sports topics. Delete all other sports related forums and move topics to their respected new forum. The last category can be the General category, where you can find an Introductions forum, a General forum, and a Music forum. Delete all other forums that aren’t included in the categories I listed, and move topics to their respected forums. Now that your layout is significantly smaller you need to make sure people know what each forum is. Add detailed forum descriptions to each of your forums, that way your members will know for sure that the administration is well organized. Now I just gave you some basic suggestions on layout, you are perfectly free to make these suggestions more interesting by coming up with more creative names of different forums, that would definitely make your board seem more original. By taking these suggestions your layout score as well as other scores will be substantially higher and your forum will be more likely to succeed. Good luck, and thank you for choosing InvisionFree Support.

Checklist:

• Forum markers don’t blend
• Mixing statistics markers
• Mixing buttons
• Default buttons
• Default pips
• Banner not good
• honda26 not so active
• Hardly any forum descriptions
• Condense sports
• Condense non-sports into one category

Review By: Santos
Date: May 15, 2006
Original Review: Here

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Forum Name: T & J Promotions
Members & Posts: 7
Appearance: 6
Board Staff: 4
Layout: 4
Overall: 5.3 [Good]

Comments:
Suggested Members for 4 days: 10
Suggested Posts for 43 Members: 1900

Well I’ve seen this forum out and about. I first saw it in an advertisement at InvisionFree Skin Zone and one of the first things I judged was the skin. The skin is rather nice but the way your modifications are set up, you overuse the maintitle. There is no need to use the maintitle for the “banner advertisements” area nor the “affiliates” area, it just makes the forum look crowded and unorganized. The other thing I noticed right away, as did many of your members, is that the width of the forum is just too large. It stretches the page of my laptop and my laptop is rather wide I should think… Make the maintitle a three part graphic, with the middle part able to repeat if necessary. This way no matter what the width of the monitor, the maintitle will look correct and adjust itself to how wide the page ought to be. I am no skinner, but I know that it can be done. Just check out our documentations or those at InvisionFree Skin Zone, I’m sure a professional skinner will be able to tell you how to do this. Another modification that is useless is the Online/Offline hack. What’s the point of this? If the member isn’t online then we can obviously see that from the list of users online on the main page. The last problem, though just a minor one, is that the team colors don’t match the skin very well. Try to pick colors that are similar to the tone quality of the skin. Using a color choose would help if you don’t know the hex codes off the top of your head. The skin is overall pretty good, just fix it up a bit, or ask Zues00 if you can fix it, and then your appearance score will be much improved.

Your staff situation is interesting. Even though you are a brand new board and your are still gathering staff, I think that it’s a good idea to make sure that the staff you hire are good. In regards to the Graphics Team, I see that only one of the team members have submitted his or her graphics to your database. I am sure that XiaolinAngel is good at making graphics, but prior to hiring a graphics staff member you ought to make sure that they have several sets of graphics to submit. That way your graphics team sets up a reputation for themselves and it gives your brand new graphics section a boost. You also have a Manager of the forums with only 2 posts. Yes I know this forum is new but at least your Managers and Administrators should have some posts that amount to something. Another thing is that you need to fill your Skin Team and Review Team. I bet it will be hard to attract skinners with ZetaBoards so near, but a Review Team shouldn’t be too difficult to find. Try using different Employment Centers of certain forums like InvisionFree Management or Creative Styles, you might be able to get some staff. Lastly, you have an Elite Member group that is a joke. You should not be award anyone an Elite Member position until it actually means something… right now it just means that you guys are buddies or “he happened to make 20 posts!” try to award this position sparingly. Just attract good staff members and build up your databases, then your board staff score should be better.

There is only one problem with the technical layout of your forum: There is no need for a Trashed Advertisements forum, just make it a sub-forum under the Advertising Zone area. More importantly, I see nothing special about your layout. It’s just a bunch of forums that you can find in a similar format on any other resource board. At least try to make your layout interesting yet condensed. Having unique names for the forums helps a bit, but the biggest thing will be to make sure that your forum offers services that no other board offers. You may have Personal Advertising, but that’s the only original thing I see on your board. Then there is the high post requirements that you need to even get these services. Don’t even offer skin requests if you don’t have a Skin Team. Get rid of the post requirements for Forum Reviews, Advertising Zone, and Affiliation Requests. Having these requirements doesn’t help you forum, it makes it so members see the requirement and think “ugh I don’t want to post that much *leave*” You don’t want that to happen. Plus by getting rid of the Affiliation Requests requirement you may find more beneficial forums along with those not so beneficial. You should significantly reduce the other post requirements, like making the Personal Advertiser service only worth 15 posts for now. Then once that feature takes off you can raise that post requirement and still get a substantial amount of posts. Make your layout original and reduce the requirements, your layout score can be higher with these changes. All of the changes throughout this review will most likely help your board in the long run, I advise you to heed to my suggestions. Good luck!

Checklist:

• Banner background doesn’t match
• Page is stretched
• Overuse of maintitle
• Pips are too large
• Difference between staff and member pips?
• Affiliates bar crowds footer
• Online/Offline mod unneeded
• Team colors don’t match well
• Manager with 2 posts…
• No Skin Team
• No Review Team
• Graphics Team inexperienced?
• Elite Member group a joke…
• Post Requirements high
• Move Trashed Advertisements to sub-forum
• Good layout, Not original
• Inspired by any other resource board

Review By: Santos
Date: May 14, 2006
Original Review: Never Released

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Forum: Zeta Zone
Number of Members: 10
Number of Posts: 1
Quality of Staff: 2
Appearance: 7
Originality: 2
Activity: 3
Layout: 4
Overall: 4 [Fair]

Comments:
Suggested Members for 16 Months: 650
Suggested Posts for 930 Members: 47,000

Over a month ago I reviewed this forum and I am sad to say that the only change that is slightly ok is the skin change. It is as if you didn’t read my review at all, I am quite disappointed. If you are going to request a review and thus request my time I expect you to take the time to read what I write. Now on to the quality of staff score. Basically nothing has changed since April 8, 2006. The review and graphics requests are completely unorganized, with graphics and reviews that are completed not moved to the correct forums. I checked your staff teams and saw that you had no Graphics or Modifications Teams. You have a single Request Assistant and a single Review Manager both with a grand total of 0 posts. You have an empty and unneeded Ripper Report team, and you have a single Skin Staff member. In total there are 7 staff members, and if somehow all 931 members came and decided to spam the board I don’t think that your staff would be able to handle it. Basically you need to get staff members that actually do their job and an organization system that is actually enforced. Try joining forums with an Employment Center and see what you can find, then just make some friends with people who can make graphics or write. I would suggest posting more on InvisionFree Skin Zone and see if anyone here would like to help you after you become good friends with them, it’ll take time but you absolutely need the staff if your forum is to survive at all.

The appearance is, of course, a classic. But that is just the problem, you can see that BGS skin at hundreds of other forums. You should find a skin that is professional looking but not overused. In fact if your board is a resource board then you should be able to make your own skin. Just make sure that the skin you make is neat and unique, or you’d be better of using on from perhaps this forum, InvisionFree Skin Zone. Just try to come up with a more original skin and your appearance score will be better.

As I said in my last review, Zeta Zone has a major originality problem. The problem is that there is nothing at all original about the forum. I can find everything, except maybe Member Reviews, at any resource board I go to. The tough thing is I can’t give you any new suggestions, I think the originality of your forum is honestly doomed. The only thing you can do to save your originality is to build up your databases and lower the post requirements for everything. Try to do that and maybe, just maybe, your originality score may be a bit higher. When you get more staff, you should make sure that they provide you with different ideas as well, perhaps they could help you with this huge problem.

The activity of your forum isn’t that great at all. Today Ntug was the largest poster with 72 posts. That is actually very good, but then number two on that list had a measly 9 posts. The post requirements don’t help boost your activity at all, no one in their right mind would request a review from a nonexistent review team for 35 posts. Basically all of the comments I stated before will help your activit score as a side-effect. Hire reliable staff members and have them post more and build your databases, it is the most important thing that you should do right now or I don’t think that Zeta Zone will survive much longer.

The second most important thing that you can do right now is to reorganize your layout and actually enforce that method of organization. On my last review from April 8, 2006, I provided the following layout suggestion. Even today I think that using the following layout would be a wise idea that may improve your layout score.

Checklist:

• Overused skin
• Resource board needs custom skin
• Review section unorganized
• Graphics requests unorganized
• No graphics team
• No modifications team
• Request assistant with 0 posts
• Review manager with 0 posts
• Ripper report team unneeded
• 1 skin staff
• 7 staff members for entire board
• Nothing original at all
• Hardly activity
• Ntug made 72 posts
• Members made 9 max

Review By: Santos
Date: May 13, 2006
Original Review: Here

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Forum Name: Echo EarthQuake
Members & Posts: 2
Appearance: 5
Board Staff: 8
Layout: 4
Overall: 4.8 [Fair]

Comments:
Suggested Members for 2 Years: 800
Suggested Posts for 100 Members: 5000

The board is looking decent but there are flaws here and there in the appearance that add up. I’m noticing quite a bit of red text everywhere and I don’t think that the skin is meant to have it. It almost looks like the red text is there by accident, that you forgot to add </span> to a team color group even. My point is that I don’t think that the red really matches the skin very well. The forum markers and even the maintitle looks a bit pixely. The multiple 3D layers for the banner isn’t attractive either. I suggest getting a completely new skin that is still dark. This skin is ok but there are definitely better skins than this one. Try looking around at InvisionFree Skin Zone or even here at InvisionFree Support for some good looking skins, your appearance and its score may improve in turn

I counted the number of staff members and the four of them seem to be doing a good job. I wouldn’t say that you absolutely need more staff members, but having another global moderator wouldn’t hurt. Simply put I don’t think that the staff force has much to do… There is a team for editing posts, a team for advertising, a team for moderating… It’s definitely original that you have these teams but I don’t think that having a Diction Doctor is really necessary. It’s good to have good grammar on the board but even with a staff member on that team I see places with incorrect grammar and spelling. You could pass with just a moderator team. Or you could make different features that require a service so there is more than just moderating for your staff to do. Overall your board staff score isn’t bad.

The layout has some problems. I signed on and the very first forum I see is not the “Echo Knowledge Base” but the “Advertising Up In Here” forum. Then I notice that your forums are categorized by age group. This is an interesting approach to organizing your forums but I don’t really like it. I think that it is best to have the first category featuring the forum community. The second category can have general forums in it but there is no need to have an “Off-Topic” forum and then a “Common Interests” forum when they could easily be combined into one. Then make the forum games area a sub-forum under your spam forum. By doing this you will condense the body of your forum a bit. Also, get rid of all of the sub-forums under the Common Interests forum, there is no need for these. The third category is in good shape. The fourth category has a whopping total of one forum! Not good. Just delete this category and its forums and move the topics to the general forum in the second category. This will slightly condense your forum layout and make it appear to be more organized. This will also improve your layout score. Overall your forum is in ok shape but for having been opened for two years you definitely should have more members. Just fix up the areas I commented on above and advertise, members may come to you. Also post some more topics in all of your forums, it’s been two years and there are still forums with only four topics in them. Good luck!

Checklist:

• Red text not attractive
• Forum markers pixely
• Default pips
• Banner isn’t attractive
• Default team colors
• Red seems to be flaw
• Buttons don’t match skin style
• 4 staff members ok
• Interesting staff positions
• Organize 1st Floor
• 2nd Floor condensed to one forum
• Reorganize with 3 categories
• Age-group interesting

Review By: Santos
Date: May 2, 2006
Original Review: Here

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Forum: Numérique Styles
Number of Members: 10
Number of Posts: 7
Quality of Staff: 4
Appearance: 9
Originality: 4
Activity: 8
Layout: 10
Overall: 7.4 [Average]

Comments:
Suggested Members in 9 Months: 600
Suggested Posts for 2700 Members: 95,000

Well it’s been a while since I’ve spent a ton of time on Numérique Styles and since then there have been some major improvements. Your probably know that I used to be on the review team there and now the tables are a bit turned, I hope that you take the time to read all of my suggestions in this review. Let’s begin with your appearance score. The skin, though it is closely inspired from Kman’s famous skin, is spectacular. My suggestion would be to get rid of the member legend though, it takes up a lot of space in the footer of the page that I really don’t think is too necessary, but if you wish to keep it than that is alright. It is a good thing that you are getting a new skin soon though; with the rising suspicion that you ripped Kman’s skin, it would be wise to change the skin as soon as possible.

The first huge issue I would like to hit on is the quality of your staff. Recently you have promoted staff that have very low posts to the force. I understand that I was once a staff member with low posts, but that is a bit different as I was a reviewer. What you’ve done is promote what looks like your friends to positions on the Community Team, a team that is specifically known for posting a ton. I don’t understand why such promotions were made since they haven’t really made too many posts even since their promotions, Vendettä and thekingsheep that is. Another thing is that there are two review requests that have been on the Evaluations Forum for quite some time, yet none of the three review staff members have attended to them at all. I understand that Delirium, one of the evaluation crew, posted that topic, but the other staff need to be sure to get reviews done as well. That issue isn’t as large as the other though. I see graphic requests that have been in the Resource Express forum for over a week. I made a request about half a month ago and it was unattended to for so long that I didn’t even notice that Insignia offered to complete it… You desperately need more request assistants, specifically more than you need low posting community team members. I would suggest offering Nathaniel a position, you and I know that he is a Request Assistant at InvisionFree Skin Zone. If he has the time then it would be a brilliant move to offer him a job. Try to organize and wake up your staff force, then your quality of staff score will reflect your efforts.

The other huge issue is your board’s originality. The main factor in your low originality is that just because your board is a resource board I am being particularly picky The other thing is there is hardly anything on your board that I couldn’t find at any other resource board; just the fact that Numerique Styles is large and has a respected database keeps it going. The only original things I found on the board were the Artist Portfolios and the Website Appearance forums. It is nice that you are doing skin and forum tournaments, but lately every single resource board and more are doing forum tournaments following InvisionFree Skin Zone’s trend. The skin tournament could be working better if there weren’t another tournament going on at the same time. Try to think of new ideas constantly and don’t get stuck in the notion that “we’re big, we don’t have to worry about being original.” It’ll come back and bite you, or if you take the correct precautions by finding more ideas then your originality score will drastically improve.

The activity isn’t too shabby, I am actually rather impressed. The only problem is that only 34 users have been online in the past 30 minutes. With a board having over 2700 members, I should expect that this user count would be much higher. One of the things that might effect this is that many boards have become enemies with your board. InvisionFree Styles, ZetaBoards Creative Styles, the list goes on: they don’t particularly like you and you don’t particularly like them. If you strive to not make enemies then the gossip will settle and members may want to come more often. That’s one of the things I’ve noticed for a while, but I do think that I will help your activity score if you’re more friendly.

And lastly there is the layout: flawless. I am usually the most strict when it comes to layout and I have to say this is the only time in any review that I’ve given a perfect score on layout, Numerique Styles is simply amazing in its organization of forums. Now when making more features be sure to keep this grand layout intact and not let the new forums crowd everything up – and at the same time don’t be afraid to crowd the layout for the sake of boosting your originality. Numerique Styles definitely deserves its perfect score in the layout category, congratulations. It has been an honor reviewing Numerique Styles; I have been meaning to review this forum for quite some time. I wish you the best of luck with your board and I hope that you take my suggestions into account

Checklist:

• Low Posting Staff
• Reviews unattended to
• Requests take forever
• Low Post Community Team?!
• Member legend omit
• Link to Members (get Arch to make it…)
• Portfolio original
• Website appearance slightly original
• Names of forums original
• Everything else = unoriginal
• 34 users in 30 minutes isn’t great
• Great layout

Review By: Santos
Date: April 30, 2006
Original Review: Never Released

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Forum: Stl Cardinals Forum
Number of Members: 7
Number of Posts: 10
Quality of Staff: 8
Appearance: 6
Originality: 7
Activity: 7
Layout: 6
Overall: 7.3 [Average]

Comments:
Suggested Member Count: 400 in 7 months
Suggested Post Count: 10,000 for 250 members

Let’s start with your quality of staff situation. It appears that there are 4 administrators and 1 moderator governing the 200+ members on your board. This adds up to a nice ratio of staff to members, but the administrators to moderators ratio isn’t so nice. With a board that has 200+ members it would be wise to maybe have 2 administrators and 3 moderators. If you were fix this I would suggest re-promoting your members by activity. This would make Ronin and Hosscat moderators instead of administrators. They might be unhappy with this change though, so only reorganize the staff this way if you feel that they won’t mind the change. Overall the staff situation isn’t bad. I see nothing going wrong and everything is put together in such a way that presents a pleasant community. This has resulted in your quality of staff score.

The appearance of your board isn’t something to brag about. Personally, I don’t really like the skin you are using. Thought it is clever how the red theme corresponds with the Cardinal colors, the red shades of the skin are overwhelming to me, being a guest. Then you have some forum markers, buttons, and team icons that aren’t bad but they don’t match the skin very well. The skin has an earthy red feeling to it and the buttons are polished shiny graphics in comparison. The green-lined team icons don’t do the red shades justice either. I suggest getting a different skin that isn’t overwhelmingly a single chalky color such as your current skin. Try using the InvisionFree Skin Zone skin searching feature and have the Skin Team here find some skins that might work perfectly for your board You should probably make it so the member groups have distinct colors as well, it is hard to tell who is an administrator and who is a regular member. Another thing I noticed is that every time I click a link or refresh the page a new banner appears. I particularly like the “2006 will be a season to remember” banner, you should just use a single banner and probably that one. More importantly by find a new skin and graphics that match it, your appearance score may very well improve.

I haven’t been on many baseball forums to be honest, but I am positive that there are more things to baseball than just chatting about official games of the MBL and Cardinals. I think that you could use some more features on the board that sets it apart from other baseball forums completely. You could have a “Create a Card” feature where the member finds a picture that they might have taken from a game and put into card-form. Then you can even have a forum bent to the purpose of instructing clueless members like me on how to play baseball. By figuring out new ideas constantly your board may become more active, your registration rates may go up, and your originality score may go up.

The Stl Cardinals Forum’s activity isn’t too shabby. When investigating I found that there are only about 70 members on the entire board who haven’t posted. This is actually not bad at all, most forums have over half of their community with 0 posts. The main issue is that you have members who have posted but they didn’t continue posting. Today alone, only 30 or so posts have been made. Perhaps this isn’t the most active day for Stl Cardinals Forum, but for a board with 200+ members you should probably be getting 75 posts a day consistently. One of the things that intrigues members and provokes them into being more active is to have a nice looking and unique skin and to have original features on the board. Give the members a reason to be there and they will help your board and its activity score boom.

One of the things that effect a first impression of any forum is the layout. Your layout isn’t too large, as is the case with most forums. No for Stl Cardinals Forum the problem is the layout is too small. When making new features on a board it usually involves creating new forums, so I wouldn’t worry too much on this issue. You should reorganize the current forums a bit though. Typically for any board the first category is the “News and Feedback” category, but on Stl Cardinals Forum the layout jumps straight to the baseball business. You could have the first category with the Stl Cardinals Forum Talk forum and the Referral Contest in it, followed by the main Cardinals and baseball chat in a second category. After that you should include the general discussion forums in a third category. I noticed that the general chat forums aren’t quite as active as the other forums however, so you should probably promote that section a bit by posting more topics that are interesting at the same time. This reorganizing and adding new features will effect every aspect of the board in some way and it would improve your layout rating. Overall your forum is decent. There are aspects of it here and there that ought to be altered though, such as the skin and layout. I wish you the best of luck with Stl Cardinals Forums. Thank you for submitting your forum for review at InvisionFree Skin Zone.

Checklist:

• Members… group?
• 4 admins 1 mod = so so
• Changing banners 2006 will be a season to remember
• Affiliates bar
• Buttons, markers, team pips don’t match
• Skin overwhelmingly red
• Nothing special, just chat
• Referal Contest not active
• More forums more diverse forums
• Reorder forums a bit
• 70 members 0 posts ish