http://freunion.vforums.co.uk

I would like C&C on my forum, Sven is more then welcome to do this as well I want to read his opinion.

Please and thank you!

Darkmage

BTW this is the new layout of the forum, so what ever you give me will be directed to the real designer of the boards. My Co Admin.

I hope that this comes of great use to you this rate. I don't disappoint
Just note that everything I say within this thread is true, however, I'm a harsh rater simply because I want you to become perfect, that is the ultimate goal of these rates.

Ok, well I like to often start with the overall forum. There is only but a few things that I like about this forum, it needs a lot more construction, thought and planning involved. I read a post of yours in rosebud's thread about how your co admin did this all overnight. No offence but it shows, a good forum can take many months to develop, the skin may only take a few hours - but it's not the skin that makes a forum great, it's the community and processes within a community. How do you make a great community? By having a great administrative team that thinks coherently and for the future.

One thing that I notice straight away is that it is an RPG forum, which is good RPG forums are great, sometimes, but it requires strong administration and will power to run a well designed RPG forum. Aside from the fact that it is easy to distinguish that it's an RPG forum - nothing much else is outstanding about this.

There are large problems:

For one, your skin is terrible. The background, is nice, and it is FF (obviously), but, it's too small and doesn't allow for users who use larger resolutions - thus creating a repeating image. This is annoying as well as ugly. A straight colour background is always nice and simple and if designed correctly, is very effective. When you are making a skin, you're focus is getting your audience (FF fans) to look at what you are posting, not being distracted by the pretty skin. If you have a repeating image in the background, you are likely to spend more time staring at that, rather than the content.

One thing that bugs me (and probably the REAL designers of the images if they find out), is that you have at the bottom of your forum AND in the banner Copyright (C) Mage Designs 2007 - 2009. However, you have in your background image: Wallpaper made by Leaf...

Quote:

ALL SKINS MADE BY MAGE DESIGNS (C) 2007 - 2009

Quote:

All images and layouts are Copyright ©2007-2009 Mage Designs

This, in my eyes, is a form of stealing - this should be rectified immediately!

Another problem with the skin, is that the on/off icons, the main design is focused around Cloud. However, all the images of Cloud are the same one - the one from the background. Again, this image was made by a guy called Leaf - yet, your co - admin (Tifa) has claimed copyright on something he/she should not have.. Sorry mate, I think you need to do some looking at your own forum about the graphical content of it.

Ok, now, steering away from the graphical issues, into your layout and content issues.

The layout, is alright - RPG forums are often messy and no one can really help that due to the fact that RPG forums require large amounts of space to get the ideas and plot across. There are several options and suggestions that I will give you to condense your board and make it more appealing to the eyes and reader.

You have your 'In The Beginning' category, it's a fantastic concept name etc for it. Your Q&A Board, and your INFO board - could be condensed into one board that gives both, but placing them in separate sub - boards etc; don't be scared of sub boards - they are your friend.

You have a Chill Out board, then if you scroll down to your Off - Topic section, this board can be moved there.

Now, you have lost 2 boards from your announcements, my suggestion is to condense and move all the Character based boards into one HUGE board with sub - boards and options tweaked etc, and then place them all in the board titled 'CHARACTER INFO' and move it into 'In the Beginning' as generally, given the names, that is where I would expect to find character development.

Theres a whole category gone

The Outskirts of Midgar category could be done similar and place it all into the Midgar category. Another category gone

The other's are fine until the OT section. Your movies and games boards can again, be moved into sub boards and placed within your general board. The advertise board shouldn't really exist - why do you want other RPGs advertising on your RPG site? (You kindda look silly with that prospect there). An archives board always looks trashy on a forum anyways. Remove it instantly, whats the point in having one? It just makes your forum look empty as it's a black hole for all your other posts in your separate boards.

A hint: Try and condense your forum as much as possible, not only does it make scrolling faster and making the board more accessible and lowering loading times, what it also does it make your forum look more active. That is a PRIME goal, for all forums - the more active you look, the more active you will be.

You have 705 posts total, thats not bad, however, some of your boards (actually, quite a lot) have only 1 post and 1 topic in them. That looks bad, if you were to condense it down so that those boards where altogether then you would have a board with a lot more posts in it, making it look more active and therefor appealing. More people will join your forum in hopes of activity and it snowballs from there.

One thing that I do not like is the whole header that you have going. It's ugly and takes up room while providing totally unnecessary information! I personally, don't care who the founder is. I personally, don't care who the admins/mods are (I'll find that out in due course). I don't WANT the updates, that makes the announcements board obsolete doesn't it? It kind of defeats the purpose of placing updates/announcements in the header as well as a board? Why not one or the other (the board preferably). That little plot/enticer, not interested - it took me 2 seconds to read it and now I have to stare at it all the time? It looses it's interest, put it into your plot summary in the plot board. Links I should know? Any forumer should find those links pretty quickly - anyone with common sense should find those links pretty quickly. If not, staff can direct them to those links - which is their job. The sister sites and affiliates? Whats the point? It's just taking up space. You're going to loose members to them as they look a heck of a lot better than you do TBH.

The news is again, uneeded info. However, looking at that, that tells me you have a limited number of characters that members can be? I looked at your character list and it looks as though there can only be as many members as there can be characters... How do you expect to get active if you limit the number of members that you can have? That's kind of silly isn't it? It's poor thought processes that think of those ideas TBH. To limit the amount of people, limits the amounts of ideas, if you have a limited supply of ideas eventually the pool of ideas is used thus creating a stagnant forum, which means if dies and falls on it's head.

I would change that whole system around to suit something so that allows for expansion rather than limits it.

Look, aside from those problems it's looking pretty decent. It's a start, but it's not something I would even consider releasing - you are probably still learning about forums though. I have the excuse that I have been making and deleting, experimenting with forums for over 3 years I've made an RPG forum which I gave up on! It had a really good plot line and everything, but it was one of my first forums and I didn't really have any idea of what I was doing, your is a lot better than my RPG forum ever was.

However, the skin is a massive issue, it looks like you have taken a lot of images from a guy called Leaf and used them for yourself + copyrighting them which is classified as theft, big no no. I have to point that out and I don't think that I can stress it's importance enough! You have to fix that! Otherwise I will find this Leaf guy and tell him what your co - admin (Tifa) has done to his works.

Look, I've used up half the space that I can, there isn't much more that I can point out - there is some massive errors that you have to fix that I can't stress enough as it is important to the survival and eventual success of the forum. I've done a bit of reading while rating this and there is some good ideas + plot behind it. Just fix those up and then ask again and we can continue. Get some help from your members on what they would like to see at the forum

Have a good crack at it mate, I know you have potential for it and aren't afraid to ask for help. I hope that what I have said actually makes a difference and the way that you see your forum and you transform it into something magnificent in V4 which I pray to god comes out soon with all of these errors either gone or severely reduced (which I will then point out again if you ask for my CC again ).

Goodluck mate, I know you can make this forum prevail and be great and active.

3/10 (sounds harsh hey?) <---It's not, I've given a lot worse many times before. My highest rating I've ever given is like a 7/10, you aren't doing too badly.

Thanks for the Rate Sven ^_^ I was really looking forward to your rate.

About the graphics, you will have to take it up with her. I don't know what her intentions on that is. I will PM this topic to Tifa, so she can read it as well, and help out on the construction of the forum. She now has limited access to the computer as her computer blew up but she can only get on, on the weekends.

Now for the intro plot, that is more of a mere insight of the forum, its more like an eye catcher like about 50 of my members on V1 on another forum service said, it caught their eye while skimming through affiliates.

There were a few boards I was considering moving down into the OT, mainly the chill out, but what to me, and almost everyone else is its an IC board, instead of an OC.

Again, I will get Tifa here right away. and for her to comment on this as well.

Now there are 13 skins in all, if a member/and or guest don't like the skin they are using they can simply move to another, 11 skins I designed my self, and the other 2 skins Tifa Designed.

More importantly the affiliates. Most of them are mine, besides maby 3. Sister site, is as needed as affiliates. As members on the sister site see our banner, they click on it, and they may/may not think my forum is interesting and leave. Affiliates are important to a forum is because advertising, same with the Advertising board, how are you to advertise, if you don't have an advertising board? Is there not an advertising board on almost every forum? Well there has on everysite that I have been on, and starting back when I started my first RPG 7 years ago, and it was my first ever forum/RPG and it lasted me 5 years, I shut it down about 2.5 years into it, and re opened it back up, and every single last members that was inactive rejoined. but then I closed it down again.

I have came along way since then. My Rping skills. My graphic design etc.

and for the "limiting members" that's not really true, that's just telling what characters we have left, There are more Original Characters created then Canon characters. and if the character that shows in the list in the above new fader, they surely will be interested, even if it is their favorite character, they will join and make their character profiles, whilst I am allowing 2 accounts per 1 user, and 2 characters per 1 account, that's 2 accounts and 4 characters one person can have.

Now for the Announcements: That is for the little stuff like, when VF goes down for a bit, and members are emailing me, and messaging me on what's going on. and I have to say that VF is down, so then the ones that did not email/message me can read the updates when the forum system is back online, and they can say "Ok, that's what happened" Why make a post about every little thing? and the Founder, that in a way is important as well as knowing who the staff is. Every forum I have seen has it like that. TBH im not changing that part just because im trying to make my RPG better then other forums. Its more of the RPG itself im changing not the content of the headers/footers.

At least im doing better then any other "new" person is doing. Im not new at this game, (heh not the FF game in general the forum one) Ive built, successful forums, forums that got close to 1,000 members, and close to 1 million posts and 500,000 posts. That was because I had a huge staff line, and a 3 person advertising. Though I let it go to a Co admin, which I trust. this was like 5 years ago, and the forum was on Invision, since then I lost the Forum link, and have changed many emails, and forgot to wright down the emails.

And Again I will get Tifa in here to read this.

and I give me self a rating of 5/15 just because im me (though that was kinda random XD)

haha As you can see, we disagree on several points on that because what you said to me made no sense especially with the headers, i still don't see a point in them.

Making a post about every little thing is vital when starting a forum, makes it look like things are happening VF doesn't go down often, I'm on off - peak times and it's never gone down for me.

Just because other sites that do it does not mean that you have to. Do you advertise on your own forum? The advertising board is for OTHERS to advertise, who cares if someone else is silly enough to put an advertising board on their forum - exploit that by all means, don't allow others to exploit you. That's stupid

The sister sites thing is the same, advertise by other means. It's a number game really, get as much as you can get for as little as you can get. By giving them a place and they giving you a place is 50/50, thats fair, but not really profitable. The affiliates I never argued with, they are important, however, the sister site isn't really they can become a regular affiliate with as much effect rather than advertising their forum on your own - as I said, it's silly advertising the SAME PRODUCT from a different company on your own website.

It doesn't matter really, you can run it how you want to run it I gave you my opinions from my experience of administrating forums, thats how I roll it and I broke a fair amount of records that other people haven't been able to do (definetly not do able without Wrighty's help though, can't forget him or he'll cut my head off!).

I actually think the Advertising board imo, helps me more then it helps other people, It opens me up to their forum which in return I go to their affiliates, and advertise on their affiliates. and as I said before, there are only 3 affiliates I have that are not mine. most of the FF's are mine, 1 isnt. and the other 2 are Fullmetal Alchemist (the animated one), and a dragon RPG.

One thing is that Ive seen large companies, like Square Enix, Sony, Microsoft, have advertisements on their sites (not the google ones) But more like Square has their gaming communities affiliates that are non square enix. Microsoft having advertisers, of forum tech support stuff, and sony, having tech support advertisers, etc.

oh I believe one thing I forgot to mention was the Archive as you like to call it, for me the trash board. For one thing if we delete out the threads, post counts go down, and make the forum less attractive. One thing I have not yet tested is can a non showing board still show the amount of posts the forum has altogether? If not then it will stay, as then half of the post counts will be reduced. and for another thing I have a sub board, that has Deleted characters area., now if we delete (move) out a users profile do to in activeness and that member rejoins and wants their character back upon request, we move it back to the accepted board. That is my reason/intention on that. If I could hide the board and still keep the post count up, I would gladly do that.

Well im think im going to get off for now, its 9:35 in the morning, I have not gone to sleep yet since 2:30PM yesterday .

Don't delete it, but why move posts there in the first place? Just leave them inactive sitting there - giving more posts to the boards, I never said anything about deleting the posts.

Also, what Square Enix, Sony, Microsoft etc do, is they actually get paid to have advertising on their website + those companies are so big, that they don't mind that. Those companies are so big, that you don't have to think about it - names like iPod for instance, are used instead of MP3 player. I tell people i have an MP3 player, they ask what that is and I tell them it's an iPod and they immediately understand.

Those companies you mentioned, are so big they don't need to advertise anymore, enough people know about them. Do you see the PS3/Xbox360 advertised or Vista? They don't NEED to be advertised, because an official news comes out and bam, everyone knows - no point in advertising because they are that famous, they don't loose customers by allowing others to advertise on their websites, it's a simple as that.

You are playing the numbers game at higher levels, you are not that high up yet - sorry to bring you down, but because the pros do it does not mean that it's right for you to do it. It will actually in the long run, loose you more members. By the time you become a household name is the time you can run advertising campaigns like that on your website.

You'll notice big time companies NEVER allow advertising of COMPETITION on their websites though.

As you said in your post, Sony advertisings tech support... what tech support can you remember? I can garuntee you that MS will NEVER allow APPLE to advertise on their website as APPLE is competition to MS, etc, etc.

You have to look at advertising effectively, there is A LOT of research going into the advertising world, you are playing it at the wrong level mate That's all I can say. When you become famous, then do it, but until such time, it's going to be detrimental to your forum.

I know you did not say delete them. But one thing back on V2 on the other same service provider I asked members if they like inactive/closed/locked threads just sitting there in the OC/IC boards, and about 80 percent said they did not like it 10 percent said yeah its ok. and the other 10 percent said they did not care if it was there or not.

well for now im keeping it. and yeah I know I said I was going to bed, but I cannot.

again, I sent Tifa a PM to get over here, so she should get it soon if not later on today.

Another thing is can you do me a huge favor is can you rate my site as well, I need desperate help on that as well, Clicketh teh signatureth XD and PM me your opinions.

One warning to you. The enter Sign. Leave me alone about that!. I only care about the main content.