New Manchester United Forum

Keano!

A little background info...

• Formed on March 2nd and launched March 14th of 2010.
• Took 8 days to have first un-known person* to sign-up and post
• Re-designed logo on March 22nd
• Forum reached 1,000 posts on May 26th 2010
• Has made it to the first/second pages on Google/Bing etc... for searches of 'Manchester United Forum' and 'Stretford Enders'
• Completed major History/results section on July 23rd
• Sent first newsletter at end of June, second went out at end of July and hopes to continue at end of each month

Known issues...

I'm aware that the layout is askew for some viewers, be it screen size of browser or both. On my home PC, it is perfectly aligned, on my work PC, its askew. We're trying to sort this problem out.. if anyone can help, much appreciated.


A review please?

Main areas I'd like revied/critic'd etc would include,

1. Logo
2. Site name
3. No. of forums
4. No of members to the length its been live
5. No. of posts to the lenght its been live
6. No. of posts to the no. of members
7. Am I on the road to having a successful forum?
8. What are your very first impressions?
9. What would you change/do differently?

Thanks.

Mr. Presentable

I think you've done a nice job. BTW, "permanent", not "permenant"

Keano!

Any more in-dept reviews?

We're launching a new skin/layout on Sunday

lucideer

First impression: the site is fluid-width (which is excellent!! ) but your login form isn't, and one or two other elements have fixed- or large min-widths - try viewing the site at 1024 screen-width.

That's only a tiny complaint though - easily fixable I'm sure :P

Cianos

Hi,
Some pointers (I'm going to be harsh but honest!);

1. The whole page is hard on the eyes. There's way too much going on and it looks like you just threw things in that you thought could fill a space.

2. Just because the colour of Man U is red, doesn't mean you have to use it at every opportunity. Red text on a white background is difficult to read. Degraded red text on a white background is even harder to read. White text on a red background is also difficult to read.

3. Remove that vertical text on the left hand side, it's throwing off the whole page and is functionless.

4. The red tone you've chosen is too stark. I couldn't imagine reading your site for more than 5 mins because of it.

5. At the top you have two squares, one being a banner space and the other being a 'sign up now' space. It's bad composition to have these two squares sitting side by side. The banner space invades the message of the sign up now space and makes it uncertain on first glance whether it too is an advertisement banner. You should have a long horizontal banner and a long horizontal sign up space sitting below it if you need them both.

I could point out quite a few more things probably but in general you should just tone it down, don't be afraid of empty space and instead bring the emphasis to the most important 'call to action' features, reduce the clutter, and only use colours and font that are comfortable to read.

In terms of your Forum itself, it seems to be going well with a decent amount of posts. One tip I'd give is to only open up new forum sections when necessary. This keeps the site more active and encourages more conversation as people have less sub sections to navigate between if they have something to say.

You have "Stretford Enders" forum for 'all things manchester united', but you also have "Transfers" forum. Is the Stretford Enders forum so busy and hard to manage that you needed to create the Transfers forum? If not, you should merge the two. Only create sub-forums when necessary.

Good luck.