Advertise Hotspot's REVIEW

Subject: Advertise Hotspot's REVIEW Wed Feb 17, 2010 7:22 am

Category of your product: Advertising Forum
Name of the product: Advertise Hotspot
Experience with the product: I'm IN IT!
Website or link to it: http://advertisehotspot.forumotion.net/forum.htm
Extra comments: Thanks in advance:)

Subject: Re: Advertise Hotspot's REVIEW Wed Feb 17, 2010 8:56 pm

Advertise Hotspot's REVIEW Adv_hotspot_02

Generalities :

Your forum has a portal page, which is commonly where the link of forums should direct the viewer to. But yours directs you to the forum. If you're going to have it direct you to the forum, then there is no need for the portal page, because nobody will go to the portal for no reason. It's basically supposed to be the homepage of your forum. The banner of your forum looks excellent, which I will talk about in the Graphics part of this review. Your forum has five categories, with 33 sections total. This is too many sections for a forum to have, and it can easily be reduced many ways. For example, you have an entire section for Forum Attendance. If you'd like to have the members attendance recorded, simply make one thread, or possibly a sub-section in the Forum Related section under Information. You could also take the Lounge, and make that one section under Extras. The sections you currently have under the Lounge could be made into sub-section in the Lounge section. These are just a few examples, there are many ways to reduce the number of sections you have, which I highly suggest, because 33 is too many no matter what type of forum it is. Getting back on the portal, I noticed you have a music player. Many forums have music players, but I can asure you they don't get listened to. When a user/viewer visits your forum site, they're coming for the forum, not the music you have on your portal. Everyone thinks it's a good idea, and I can see why you'd think that, but in my opinion as a reviewer, it's not a good decision to add that. If you'd like music to play on your forum, maybe you could have a pop up that plays music or a radio station, so the user could listen to it while browsing the forum. Otherwise, they'd have to sit at the same page to listen to the music when they could just look it up on music playing sites like YouTube. But overall, your forum looks nice when I first browsed through.

Graphics :

When someone goes to a forum at first, the first thing they see is the banner of the forum. It sometimes makes them decide whether or not they will continue looking through it. Which means it's obviously good to have a nice looking banner. The banner you made is excellent. The fire in the word Hot and the bullseye on the O in Spot really compliment it as well. But the background doesn't look too good. If you had the banner and used it without a background, keeping it as the skin's color, it'd look much better in my opinion. The navigation bar you use is very simple, it has nothing to it at all, however it does go with the skin. If you had a nicer looking one, it'd make the forum's looks better, though. The category icons are very nice, and correctly correspond to the category it's representing, which is more then I can say for some forums. Basically, your forum has a simple design and skin aside from the banner. Which is absolutely fine.

Usergroups :

Your legend consists of nine usergroups including Administrators, Global Moderators, Moderators, Packagers, Post Maniacs, VIP Members, GFX Designers, Reviewers, and Members. The groups of Members and Post Maniacs are pointless to include in the legend. The legend commonly only has the usergroups that are staff. The members group is obvious, and doesn't need to be included at all. The Post Maniacs group is more of a rank then a group. Instead of having only one of these, why not set up a rank system? For example, when a user has obtained 50 posts, they get the rank of Active Poster. When they reach 100 posts they rank Post Maniac, and so on. This is a very nice addition to forums. Some believe it will bring spam, but that can always be handled with moderation. Speaking of, you have no members in your Global Moderators group, making it currently pointless. However, you have four moderators. I don't see why you don't promoted one or two, perhaps those most active and who moderate best. Your administrative group has only one member, yourself, which I can understand if you don't trust anyone else to assist you in this yet. You have no packagers either, which you can solve by advertising that your forum needs staff if you haven't tried already. You have two graphic designers, and one reviewer, which is not many, but as long as they get the work done it's up to you. Like I said, you may want to try and advertise for staff a bit more. The colors of your usergroups aren't very nice looking to put it in a good way. You should try using common colors that will compliment the skin and general looks of your forum.

Forum Activity :

Your forum has a total of 98 members if you include myself, and 2276 posts. That's about 23 posts per members which is pretty decent, but could be much better. When I joined your forum, I was the only registered user online, but there were four guests which shows you're doing a great job advertising. You also have 20 members connected within 24 hours, which is somewhere around 18% of your total population. This is pretty good for an advertising forum, nice work there. For a new forum yours is very active. But one disappointing thing is the activity of staff. Not including yourself, you have three out of seven members of staff who have been connected within 24 hours. That's not even half. Staff are supposed to come on your forum daily, even if it's only for a few minutes, to check if they have an requests to satisfy the one who requested. What if within those 24 hours someone had requested and nobody was there to answer? That's not good service. But I've looked through the old requests in all sections under services, and most are completed. They get the job done, but maybe need to work on getting it done sooner. Next time you're promoting someone, make sure it's someone loyal and will stay active as a staff member.

Ratings :

Generalities - 18/25
Graphics - 19/25
Usergroups - 14/25
Forum Activity - 22/25
Total Score - 75%

Overall Suggestions :

Make the portal the first page seen when visting the site
Work on reducing the number of sections
Rid the music player, or change it to a pop up one
Edit the background of the banner to your forum
Delete the groups of Members and Post Maniacs from your legend
Devolop some sort of rank system based upon posts if you like
Advertise for staff members more often
Change the colors of the usergroups on your legend
Make sure you're promoting members to staff only if they'll be active

Thanks for reading this review ! Be sure to rate it here : http://www.fujiplanet.net/reviews-section-f5/rate-your-review-t3368.htm

Subject: Re: Advertise Hotspot's REVIEW Wed Feb 17, 2010 11:26 pm

Awesome review sk9!

Subject: Re: Advertise Hotspot's REVIEW Wed Feb 17, 2010 11:31 pm

Wow. I agree. That is your best, by faaaaaar.

Subject: Re: Advertise Hotspot's REVIEW Wed Feb 17, 2010 11:46 pm

You say that every time i review something. I appreciate your comments guys, but the only one who really has to comment it is Joel.

Subject: Re: Advertise Hotspot's REVIEW Thu Feb 18, 2010 1:11 am

Personally I hate doing web site reviews because theyre always so long...

But you did great. :)

Subject: Re: Advertise Hotspot's REVIEW Thu Feb 18, 2010 3:03 am

Nice review sk9.

Subject: Re: Advertise Hotspot's REVIEW Thu Feb 18, 2010 3:41 am

good job Cyclone! Hope you'll be a part of our forum too!

Indeed its a great review! Thanks for the effort!

Subject: Re: Advertise Hotspot's REVIEW Thu Feb 18, 2010 8:32 am

Archived