Positively Criminal [4 Reviews]

[Cuethelaugh]

Hello.. After a HUGE cyberbully ran us out after around 6-7 years of function we have returned and started over.. COMPLETELY over. Would love to know your opinions on the very basic layout as well as what we can do to improve!

positiv3lycriminal.proboards.com/

Thanks in advance and glad to be back!

-cuethelaugh

[writersblock]

Hey cuethelaugh! Great site! I took a look through and here is what I found - mostly good stuff. I'm super detail oriented, so...um, sorry if I did a little too much here and gave you a novel to read.

What I Like / What Works

• Header: Love the header image. It's gritty and sets a great mood for the site.
  
• Color scheme: Of course, red, white and black are perfect colors for criminal site. The gradient category bars are great too.
  
• Layout/Readability: Everything is very clean, easy to read and ordered.
• Rules/Site Information: This is very thorough and well described!
• Tone: There is a great, conversational tone throughout the site information, rules, applications, etc.
• Character Application: Very thorough with a good setup. The ONLY thing I would change is maybe moving the Likes through Weaknesses section up under personality. Either that, or give it another header like the Personality and History sections; it just loooks a little out of place.
• Board choice: You have a lot of great, creative places for posting. I like the Phone/Email space too - I feel like that's often forgotten.
  

Neutral / Consider Minor Changes

• Fading member names: I'm not quite sure what I think of this. On the one hand, it's kind of a neat trick that you let members choose. On the other...some of the fading makes the member names hard to read (like when they choose yellow), and it kinda breaks away from the great color scheme you've got going, but only a little.
  
• Navigation section: I like that you have a navigation section, and you chose good things to put there. However...it's kinda far down in the general scheme of things. Maybe put it above the Cbox for easier usability, or make the Welcome box a horizontal thing that  goes above the boards. Haha, just saw the You See Nothing link - clever
• Sandbox: I'd maybe put in the Site Plot board that you're sandbox friendly or something, and link it to the Sandbox board. Most people that like sandbox RPs will stop by that board anyway, but just to increase the ease of use for guests who might only be glancing at your site, it might be a little more convenient.
  

What I Don't Like / Things to Improve

• The welcome box: I don't know if it's just me or my browser (I'm using Firefox), but the text in this welcome box is aligned weird. I'm guessing it's supposed to be centered, but about the last eighth of every single line of text is cut off - and I can't scroll over to read what's missing. It might just be that the coding for the text field is fatter than the text box it is supposed to fit in.
  
• Left out coding: This is SUPER minor, but a couple of your main information boards have some broken/showing coding. The Site Plot board has an img that isn't working, and your Rules have  [*/blockquote] hanging out at the end. Just make sure to double check through those things from time to time.
  

[Cuethelaugh]

Thanks so much writersblock! No worries about the novel. I love it. I'll send this along to management and see what they think and what we can do to make the experience even better.

Thanks again!

BUMP to anyone else. Would LOVE more opinions!

[rohan]

Not much to say here if you took and implemented Writer's ideas. I really loved this forum. 9/10.

Edit : Are you using the color smear plugin ? If so it seems to only work on the Forum boards. Not, when you look at the user profile.

[Cuethelaugh]

Thank you so much! What would you suggest that would bring our forum to a 10/10 instead a 9/10?

 

And yeah we are. One of the other admins likes the colors. I don't mind either way. I'm more about accepting members, encouraging roleplay, and helping people plot (also with their storylines).

We even each other out pretty well!

Thanks again for your help!

[Former Member]

Hi there!

The first thing I noticed is that the navigation tree contrasts too much with the dark colour immediately above and below it. I'd suggest making it slightly darker so that it doesn't 'pop' as much.

I don't like how the side panels touch the sides of the category panels.

I think you would benefit from using a darker forum background. I like the pattern but it's difficult to see because of the brightness of it. Alternatively you could remove the dark background that is behind the boards. That would make everything flow in a better way, and it would distract/hurt the eyes less.

I can barely see the text inside the prev/next buttons on the pagination bar. It's the same for the reply button, though that is easier to see.

The right side text alignment in the Welcome box is very weird. You read along the lines from the left to right but when you get to the last line the text is on the right hand side.

---

I like your banner! It's relatively simple but effective and it gets the point of the forum across pretty nicely in my opinion. Good work.

I like how it looks like the line under each board title kinda looks like it has come from the gun to the left. Not sure if that was intentional, but it's pretty cool.

I mean, overall, there isn't anything wrong with your forum aside from some small issues that don't really detract from the experience in a significant way. I do think that the biggest issue is contrast between the background of the forum, the dark colour and the white colour of all the containers. That can be fixed relatively easily, though.

Everything is just my opinion of course!

[Cuethelaugh]

Thank you Kurisu for your in depth review! It is very helpful and we really appreciate it.

I'm sending this over to the admins who handle design and hopefully they can figure out a way to address the small issues that you pointed out.

So glad that you, and the other two reviewers, like the site!

Thanks again!

[vectorwoman]

Wow! I really like the look of your site. Well done. No complaints here.

[Cuethelaugh]

Oct 14, 2014 0:09:54 GMT -8 vectorwoman said:

Wow! I really like the look of your site. Well done. No complaints here.

Oh wow! Thank you! What a compliment and much appreciated. I'll pass this along to the staff. Maybe we are doing something right over there!

Thanks again!

[Cuethelaugh]

BUMP!