Aliens Colonial Marines

Greetings.

This is my latest endeavour, a fansite relating to Aliens Colonial Marines, a new game that is due out next year. I had a bit of success with left4deadforums.com recently and wanted to try it again with a site that will face a little more stiff competition.

URL: Aliens: Colonial Marines News
Started: 24 June 2009

Running vBulletin, vBadvanced and soon to be vBSEO (as soon as I can transfer my licence).

I'm interested in an overall review of the place, and how I could get guests turned into members.

Thanks for viewing!

 

oh, i was in touch with one of the 3d artists of this alien project last year. nice to see that this project did work out, apparently

imho the style has nothing unique yet. only basic fades and colors (and only 2 of them black and blue)

i also dislike posts where the avatar and the signature's columms are 2 times bigger than the actual post. i would leave the forum immediately. (srsly, i have to look for the posts beginning and end every time )

looks all in all very unfinished to me.

 

You've got to move your bulleted list in a bit, and the logo would probably look a little better if the line with Colonial Marines was as wide as the Aliens text.

 

I don't think its too far off from being a nice simplistic forum design.

I think you should edit the grey border around the whole forum, to just a blue glow (like the one in the ALIENS header as a border around the forum. This will give it a bit of depth, making the forum look to be the focus and will connect the design to the header more than it is now.

 

Thank you for the comments. I'll take them under consideration.

 

The images on the home page are WAY too big, its taking a long time to load them. And their breaking the frame of my browser - I run my screen resolution at 1024 X 768. It looks like your site was set up for 1280 X 1024.

Get those images down to something like 640 X 480, or 320 X 240 and use a lightbox to open them up bigger if you need to.

When I went to register, the text is blending into the background too much. Makes it difficult to read. Looking at the index of the forum, there really needs to be more contrast between the background and the text.

For privacy reasons, you may want to hide the members date of birth and age.

 

Very very nice forum. Love the design, very in-keeping with the theme of the forum, and easy to navigate. Just being reading a bit and it appears to be quite informative too. Not too sure what to suggest for improvements, you seem to have it under control.

I wish you luck with it.

 

First Impression: … Looks…ok

Forum Content​

Quantity of forums: Nice! Not too many. Short and simple!
Content: Seems like you have good discussions in there! I really like it that you try to keep all of your content “Alien” related since it IS the topic of your forum. I’m not fond of the games, but the forum does seem a bit interesting.

Forum Design​

Favicon: Tsk, tsk, tsk, default vB icon, doesn’t really go well, don’t ya think?
On, Off, Lock icons: I am not fond of them, I’m not font on a lot of the icons in the forum, you have the default reputation icon, which looks bad on dark backgrounds.

Design: What the hell is with that gray box surrounding where the actual content is allocated? Looks bad in my opinion and I really think the forum could look better without it. What is with the welcome box? Please refer to the screenshot below when you read this, the unordered list is actually out of the box, even if you expand it stays out of the “Notices” box[circled], is something wrong with it? Looks very unorganized. Secondly, I think your navigation[in a square...sort of] is VERY dark and you can have somewhat of a hard time reading.


Also, the rank images are HUGE, too big in my opinion. You have some default vB icons that don’t look good on black BG, though I like that you replaced the “Post Reply, New Thread….” Buttons, I like them.

Overall Opinion: Seems that your site is very active, but your design is very confusing. I would suggest just fixing the little bumps, pump more the action in there, and try to hold some contests to keep the hype. Encourage users to try and take a video of their game play and just have fun. Also, for newbs who are new or fairly new to the game, try to explain a bit what the game is about, some people might get interested just by looking at a forum. Good luck.

 

Thanks for the comments guys. I do appreciate them, look at them, take them on board and implement changes. Kevin, I've added an image resizer.

Ahh yes. On my "to do" list. :lol:

The status icons need changing, I agree. They were temporary and I just never got around to changing them.

A border. I tried it without and it looks "floaty". Suggestions for a different colour perhaps?

What browser are you using, may I ask? In Chrome & Firefox it looks fine. :/

Ahh well............. My thinking was "it's better than a blank space"

 

No border looks better.

Firefox, Opera, IE8 and Safari.

Better than a blank space but it makes it look sort of not good.

 

I've replaced the welcome notice with an image:

.

 

I do like the new welcome image, though I find the text a little hard to read/fuzzy around the edges.

this is what the random images gallery held when I visited... just thought it was funny.

 

I'm back!

Some months have passed. What do you think? Aliens: Colonial Marines News

 

Im sorry but your Logo looks bad with the blue bits around it...

 

No need to apologise, but can you explain please? What blue bits? (there for 4 logos in rotation)

 

Its on a couple, Where you have the word ALIENS and then blue bits around it like you've attempted to cut it, It would be better to remove it then apply a blue glow or something.

 

FWIW, I don't see any blue bits.

 

This should be better:

.