vForums Support > General :: Message Board Opinions :: > Warriors of the Flames

Warriors of the Flames - Posted By Graystorm (warriorfreak) on 15th Jan 08 at 4:52am
Click
Made everything except the menu buttons. Too lazy. =P It's still in progress.

Re: Warriors of the Flames - Posted By ashkir (ashkir) on 15th Jan 08 at 5:24am
I will rate it when it's out of Maintance Mode.

Re: Warriors of the Flames - Posted By Marc (cr0w) on 15th Jan 08 at 9:29pm
 
I will rate it when it's out of Maintance Mode.


Agreed; if you would like us to rate, open up your forums for guests to see.

Re: Warriors of the Flames - Posted By XeroCint (kai) on 16th Jan 08 at 12:18pm
Eh, from what I can see, it doesn't look that great. >,>

Re: Warriors of the Flames - Posted By Michael (wrighty) on 16th Jan 08 at 4:37pm
You need to get some posts made in the boards, because currently they just look empty and it looks like your forum is dead.

I also suggest not going for just black! {Wink}

Re: Warriors of the Flames - Posted By Graham (amusedtodeath) on 16th Jan 08 at 4:45pm
 
Eh, from what I can see, it doesn't look that great. >,>


You could be a bit more constructive? At least tell them what and how it can be improved {Tongue Out}

Re: Warriors of the Flames - Posted By NS (ns) on 18th Jan 08 at 6:26am
Hi {Smile} ,

First off, I see your banner. It's a good banner, though I do think that you could probably request one that would be made by someone who probably has a bit more graphic experience than you, but if you don't want to request one, yours is fine, it looks good.

I do think that you should put the time in to make some menu buttons, because the default ones don't match the style of your forum.

The background is nice, it matches the rest of the forum. The gradient is nice, though the blue looks a little out of place with the red on/off icons.

I like the rollover color for the links, it is subtle yet noticeable and matches the category title color.

The information center is nice, not much to say about that.

I agree with others that have posted in that you should try to fill up your boards. A bunch of empty boards doesn't look welcoming to new members, so even if you just post a couple times in each board, just try to make it look full.

Lastly, I think that you should consider lowering the width of your forum. I think that forums that have a lowered width look a bit better than those that have the default width.

Overall, it looks good. I'm not a personal fan of dark forums, but yours looks nice. One thing though is that the only cat-related aspect of your forum is the one cat in your banner, which doesn't really matter because fans of the series will recognize the title "Warriors" and realize that it's dedicated to the series, though it's something to consider if you ever want to update your forum. {Smile}

Re: Warriors of the Flames - Posted By ashkir (ashkir) on 29th Jan 08 at 7:27pm
Hello there, warriorfreak. =].

From an appearance point of stand view I do not see much work put into your message board. This is my humble opinion however. Your graphics seem to be very basic, which, at first is a great start but there is much that can be improved upon. Your title of your message board is ‘Warriors of the Flames’, so I understand the fire. Which race are the warriors? Can you find images of them? How about adding them to your banner?

I would like to make aware you do not have to stick to the mainstream look for the theme for any message board. I have seen a supernatural RPG use a light blue before which was unheard of before they have done so. It used to be that every design message board once was all dark colors, usually gray or black, now many of them are using blue and green or other lighter colors.

For your menu icons I suggest investing some time into that after you are satisfied with your banner. Many people usually do the message board’s menu icons after they finish on/off, banner, gradients, and background images. When you do your graphic design it is solely up to you, yourself, as your message board’s owner.

From looking at the banner on your message board once again I realize your width is greater then your banner side. I am not sure if this is intended or not, but since it looks to me it was not intended I do suggest changing it down to the width of your banner which right now is 780 pixels. By doing this, people with larger screen sizes won’t see large black gaps to the sides of your banner.

The on / off icons (new / old icons) on your message board look alright to me, but I am curious if they are the same or not. I do however wonder if they are the same, and even now, why do they look so bland? It looks like the same render / stock used in your banner (or style which is great!). But your on / off icon really doesn’t look like it fits to me.

The background image you have on your message board looks like the night sky, I am curious why? All I can think of is a campfire in the middle of a night with a bunch of warriors around it looking up at the stars. Well, this is me, but I wonder what other people think about that if they take a few seconds of their life to wonder about it. I feel the background image you used on your message board does not fit.

Your gradients look blue to me. But, I wonder why? The blue does not seem to fit your message board’s other colors, even in your banner. Woah wait, I just realized I saw a cat in your banner, a warrior cat RPG? Wow, it just took me a while to realize that. Should not the theme / concept be apparent from my first view of the board before I start wondering ‘what kind of warrior rpg’?

I feel your ‘General’ category has too many boards on the main page. Take advantage of the infinite sub-boards would be my advice here. Couldn’t contests be merged with news? Can Away be made into a sub-board of something called 'Arrivals and Departures' or such? Random and Pointless games can go in the general board in my opinion. Play around with these is what I suggest.

On 'General Meows' your description starts with 'you can talk', I suggest capitalizing 'you' to be 'You'. A lot of your descriptions are a bit bland. How about opening up a document like Microsoft Word list each board you have then write a description with each being about the same length? Try to avoid ‘I’, ‘You’, ‘Us’, ‘We’, and ‘Our’ for professionalism.

As Wrighty, has pointed out above, get some posts in those boards. Do you have any real life friends who can help you get started? Or know anyone who can help? I have seen a few role play boards start out by one person role playing with themselves with multiple accounts to make it look active.

From now this is all I can say. My main suggestion is work on your appearance of your message board to bring it up to something like ‘eye candy’. Make it attractive. I was a guest, I am not interested in joining, is that a bad thing or good thing?

Re: Warriors of the Flames - Posted By Graystorm (warriorfreak) on 2nd Feb 08 at 5:02pm
Well, as NS mentioned it is a dead forum. I was trying to make a proboards Warriors of the Flames into a virtualforums Warriors of the Flames because virtualforums is much better than proboards imho. It turned out to be a little too much word changing the forum to virtualforums so I just left it the way it is. Thanks for the opinions though. {Smile}