Curse of the Beast

[alarice]

curseofthebeast.proboards.com/

Wondering if anyone has any opinions on my board?

[Tumbleweed]

Jan 2, 2015 13:32:01 GMT -8 alarice said:

curseofthebeast.proboards.com/

Wondering if anyone has any opinions on my board?

A quick critique:

What I like:

--It's a simplistic flat design.

--Always like a mid-tone gray background color with light text as opposed to an absolute black background with absolute white text. 

--I like the images you picked out for your boards. Very nice.

What could be improved:

--The category titles are not centered and look odd. You may want to try adding this to the bottom of your style sheet to see if it fixes that.

Admin> Themes> Advanced Styles & CSS> Style Sheet>

 

/* center cat titles */

.container > .title-bar.bbcode h2 {width:auto!important; }

You may want to center your side table main titles (Welcome, Open threads, etc) like your cat titles. Also you might want to widen your side tables just enough so London Weather is all on one line.

--Where you are using images in your boards, the description text doesn't look nice off to the right. Might want to fiddle with either moving the images over a bit to the right but you'd still probably need to either reduce the indentation (currently has padding-left:20px;) of the description text and even reduce the width of the description. I believe you might be using a plug-in for that. If so, take a look if there are settings you can change. (Sorry, I've not used a plug-in for that so don't know if there are settings to adjust.)

--I think making your side table titles (Year, Season, Weather) stand out a bit more, like your board titles do, would be better. Maybe by using just a slightly lighter font color or making the titles just slightly larger as you did on the board titles (compared to the description/content text)

--In your side tables, the "Staff" isn't using the same style as the other titles in the side tables.

--Your banner is o.k. but I do have a pet peeve when the name of the site is right on the very edge of the banner. Just a few pixels higher would look better but that is just my personal taste.

--Although your site background picks up/looks like the same background in your banner I'm not crazy about it and maybe too much of that texture. Maybe try some ProBoards background textures. It might be also that it is too much of a contrast (very light) compared to your board background colors and has a slight hue of purple which your banner doesn't have.

Overall: Just a few things need tweaking and although I typically like a simplistic design, it may just be a bit to simplistic or bland. Just bringing in a little subtle color might make the difference. Maybe the titles a slightly off color gray?

I think that's all I'll suggest for now and remember, I'm just one person with an opinion so if you love what you did and your members love it, then that's all that counts.

[alarice]

Okay, So I DID NOT code the site. I don't know how. My friend Rebellion did lol. I'll mention some of the things to her and let me fiddle around ^^ I love the input, and I'll definitely come back once we tweak it  

[Mixed]

Hello! I'd like to give my two cents.

What I like:
   -- The concept! I'm totally into the whole wild vs post-civilized thing. Though personally, I think I'd vote for the dogs integrating in with the wolves and vice versa... Well, now that I think of it, maybe not all dogs. Some combos seems a little strange.

  -- The design and style. I like how clean and simple it feels. Very easy to read. Very easy to skim to find what one is looking for. Give Rebellion a pat on the back or something for me?

  -- The pictures. Like they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. But you don't just leave it with that! I like where the captions for said pictures are and how they add to it. It makes me wonder though, what's so not-so-special about Big Ben.


What could be improved:
  -- The style? Hang with me for a moment. I really do like the clean and simple feel of it but at the same time maybe it's TOO clean? I'm just thinking a little wild in the background might add to it. Perhaps vines or something through the vertical stripes could give the illusion of the wilds reclaiming human civilization. They could even be a different shade of grey so it wouldn't clash with the color scheme.

  -- Placement. But just in a few instances. I have to admit, I almost posted a reply here asking where your rules were before I found them on the side. The thing is, I needed to scroll down and know to look on the side for it. These important links, it's great to have them on the side where they can be accessed from every page and board (maybe even bumped them up on the side above the weather report?). Perhaps for guests though, it would be a good idea to also have a board with them linked too in the main boards area, near the top?

  --  Placement (again). This time for the captions, though. It just seemed like both the picture and the caption weren't centered in their respective board. They weren't even centered with respect to each other. The crispness of the layout could be heightened, I think, if they were realigned.

  -- Picture size. Not for all of them, just the top one. I only think it would look nicer if it was spread over the full banner width.


Random Question:
 -- Once new packs are formed, will they also be able to carve out a territory (board) for themselves?


Overall:
Your forum looks great and ready to roll. With only a few tweaks, it could only get better. But then again, you and your members are the ones living with it so all suggestions are completely optional (as always).

[alarice]

NO i totally agree We have tweaked it a bit (I mean rebellion) and think we should get a new opinion?

curseofthebeast.proboards.com/

Mixed

[:~:Sarapha:~:]

Hello alarice, I am Sarapha, a friendly reviewer of forums. The way that I review a board is that I look it over as a guest, and write down what I see, in the order I see it. Then, I take another look, and see what details can be tweaked. I have 8+ years of experience with Proboards and its glory. Let us start

First Glance
One quick scroll through, everything looks beautifully done. I'm a huge fan of the purples, and that look just makes me happy, especially the category headers. Great job on that

The Main Banner
From the main banner, and the title of the board, I can believe that the site is about wolves, and possibly what looks like a city. It doesn't really tell me much more, though. Could be an apocalypse setting where wolves are the only ones left, could be about werewolves, at this point, this site could really be about anything. The main Banner, while visually appealing, doesn't exactly speak to me in terms of the topic.

Side Table
Aha! The side table tells me what is going on. I understand now. A suggestion that I have is that, for the Staff section, link each name to the main account of that member. Often-times, that is the first place that someone will look if they have a question and need to PM someone.

Boards
Given that the rules ad other information of the site is located in the General Board, I would probably rename that board to be something like "Rules & Information", so that prospective members know that is the first place that they should go, and also the place that they will find the rules and plot and such for the site. When I see something that says "General Talk", I assume it's just a board for randomized talk (just like our lovely Proboards Support general board.) Another suggestion is to post the rules and the plot threads together in the same board. Having individualized looks too busy. If they were threads that would have a reply to them, or if they were several threads in one, I could recommend the separate sub-boards for them, but a general board of "Rules & Information", then having the "Rules and Guidelines", then "Plot" listed would suffice, and would be less clicking for members.

The Plot
90% of the site plot tells me about humans, and everything going on with the humans. 10% tells me about the dogs. By reading that, I'm not sure if it's implied that there are still humans that live there, or if all of them are gone, and I don't know the conditions of which the dogs are living. Is there a shortage of food and water? Is there any side-effects at all with the dogs in terms of this experiment? Is it only dogs that are left, or are all animals unaffected? Wolves are invading... Why? Are wolves played on this site? There are a lot of questions left unsaid in the plot, and it's on the border of being too informative on the human aspect, and not enough on the dogs part.

The Rules
Rule #4 should be covered by both rules 3 and 3.
Rule #6 will get your forum entirely deleted. There is no content like that allowed under any circumstances to a board hosted by Proboards. Given the context of non-human characters, it is most definitely something that will get the board deleted without a second glance, and I threw up in my mouth a little just reading that you had it there.

Because of that, I'm sorry, I cannot continue this review.