Discuss Life

A general discussion community founded by myself and Tom P. here, with a custom theme by our very own FullMetalBabe. I can take constructive criticism, so don't hold back.

Discuss Life

 

Hey OneUpDave,

Here's a quick review of your DiscussLife community:

The buttons at the top look out of place, almost like they're missing a background image or something to divide/break them up. As it sits, it looks like one big run on navigational link.

The login/register links are small and almost lost in the design. I'd try to make them stand out more and hopefully help you gain more members.

I like how you have your forums broke up into tabs. However, I think there are still to many forums over all, and a lot of the forum descriptions looked blank or lots of empty space to them. I know titles are self explanatory, but the large empty space it leaves doesn't look appealing.

The forum names should be slightly larger out on the forum home page. This could also help solve part of the problem with empty space above

If the pharmaboard link (footer link) isn't neccassary I'd remove it.

The bar that breaks apart the annoucements/important/regular threads needs to stand out more. I'd try to use the blue color/gradient there with a white font.

Other than these small issues I think you're off to a pretty good start with your community. Best of luck with it.

 

Since I made the skin, I have to ask, what buttons at the top?

 

Yeah, the lack of descriptions are my fault. Got too busy lately to finish them.

I don't follow.

Uhm, that's news to me. Thanks for pointing it out.


As for the other, graphical/design issues, that's FMB's territory. But thanks for the review!

 

Yeah, the Pharmaboard plugin, I forgot which one it was, it's part of the license to let the link in the footer.

 

Well when I get a free chance (prolly not today) I'm just going to remove the code. That's pretty underhanded, if you ask me. I don't mind linking to an author's site, but ads just piss me off.

 

Thanks for the review!

 

I would sign up but the tabbed forums are putting me off. I like one big index page.

 

The index page would be way to big then :/

 

Exactly - hence us using tabs, to ensure organization.

 

So don't have many forums.

It's annoying to have to click on the different tabs to check for new posts every time...

 

It's a general discussion community that focuses on the topics of each category, I think it's pretty organized to have it divided like that instead of a mess.

 

Yeah, I've seen Gen-Disc forums that only have five sections, and usually obscure or really vague sections at that. If you don't like the tabs, turn of JS in your browser options, then view the forums. Of course, other JS-dependent features won't work, either.

 

Eh...

Most forums don't use tabs and most users go for what they're used to. Tabs seem pretty unknown and have drawn me off, as well as someone else I was talking to about it.

I don't want to disable JavaScript when I use it for other times. It's a pain.

 

Regarding the Tabs

Firstly, if you were to keep the tabs, the "Front Desk" shouldn't be first. People want content when they land on the page -- not the boring stuff.


Secondly, whilst I understand that your forum is a General Discussion forum (and therefore has a wide range of subjects to discuss), you must realize that you should never start 'big' in terms of how many forums you have. There is no way you will be able to actively populate each and every one of those forums in the beginning. Many of them will be left in the dust and as a result, your forum will look much more inactive than it actually is.
For example: If you go to a forum and see 10 posts in 15 different forums, it doesn't look very active. But if you see 75 posts in 2 forums, it looks more active -- yet it's the same exact amount of posts (in total) as the first community.

This thread talks about exactly what I'm saying: http://www.adminaddict.net/forum/community-organization/too-many-forums-2725/

In the "General Discussion" category: You really only need Life in General. You might get away with keeping Current Events but Food and Beverages definitely doesn't need its own forum. The Random Junk one is fine I guess.

In the "Tech" category, you don't even need any other forums -- just the "Tech" forum will do, until growth dictates the need for specific sub-forums.

Travel, Sports, and Entertainment don't need to be categories with sub-forums -- they should each be individual forums. The same actually goes for the Debate category until it grows.


So if this were my forum, I would set it up with only two categories (reduced from your current seven): (all on the index, without the tabs)

• Front Desk
  • News and Announcements
    • User Announcements
  • Help and Support
    • FAQ
• Discuss Life
  • General
    • Random Junk
  • Current Events
  • Tech
  • Travel
  • Entertainment
  • Sports
  • Debate

I think even that is quite a bit of a big start, but it's a huge improvement from your current setup.


Hope this helps!

 

I agree with Nick here.

 

Sounds good. I'll assign Tom the task of fixing that.

Too busy to actually keep up with it.