New Jersey Model Car and Cycle Forum : Please Review

[firemist001]

The forum has been around for about 10 months. It gets about 100 visitors a day and at times its been close to 150, but it still isn't catching on. One potential problem that came to mind is the fact that the name begins with New Jersey, and I am thinking people out of state may not want to participate? Maybe too regional? Also, what do you think of the structure or the way its organized? Any feedback would be appreciated. The name of the forum is New Jersey Model Car and Cycle Forum. Below is the link: 


New Jersey Model Car and Cycle Forum

[firemist001]

Yes they would be! For now, you can post them in the cars and trucks section if you like, but if there was enough interest I could also create an individual section. Also, if you have a chance you can check out some of the model car show pictures and there should be some rigs in there. I was to a live show at Boyertown, PA this weekend, and took a really nice picture of a lumber hauling build! Finally, any opinions on the forum itself would be appreciated. 

[CrazyBoy]

I want to tell you that you need to affiliate and advertise your forum
and the visitors you're getting are only google bots! there is some are real maybe.
make sure that you are active on all boards as poeple gave me their feedback,
make a thread on advertise your forum and to affilaite create thread on affilaite exchange 
if you don't have an affiliate image you can request one on graphic design
hope that's helped you

[firemist001]

DC , Thanks again for your feedback and joining my forum. 

Ismail, thanks for the tip on affiliation I am looking into right now. 

[firemist001]

Ismail.

One other question for you, how do you know the visitors are bots? Does it have something to do with the number users online vs. most users online? If you get a chance let me know.

[CrazyBoy]

Sept 11, 2019 11:41:34 GMT -8 firemist001 said:

Ismail.

One other question for you, how do you know the visitors are bots? Does it have something to do with the number users online vs. most users online? If you get a chance let me know.

click on 56 Guests (for example)
and you'll see IPs are similar that's mean they're bots
148....
63....
these are bots 

[firemist001]

I see what you mean. I had 3 guests online and two of them had address with the first 3 octets identical. Thanks for the info! Also, I may have some questions on affiliations when I get around to it. 

[CrazyBoy]

Sept 11, 2019 11:49:51 GMT -8 firemist001 said:

I see what you mean. I had 3 guests online and two of them had address with the first 3 octets identical. Thanks for the info! Also, I may have some questions on affiliations when I get around to it. 

feel free to ask,but i don't know where you can ask  

[Kami]

Hi there! A slow day at works means more time for forum reviews!

I'll be going over three things: First Impressions, Content, and Design. Then, I'll provide a few additional suggestions on how you can improve and provide a score out of 10. This score is a sliding scale, so don't judge what you get based on my other reviews -- for instance, a general forum with a plain design might score high, but a design forum with a plain design would score low.

---

First Impressions: 

A little plain, but not bad! Seems to have a lively discussion going on, even though there are less than 20 members. Admin seems active, always a good sign.

Second Look: Design

Not going to lie, the design is a little plain for me. It's not a big deal when all is said and done, but I can't imagine this is the first Model forum on the internet so a more creative design might be helpful to give your forum an edge over longer-running forums.

That said, the design itself is easy to read. The only criticism I have is that the footer links (the PB links to the TOS, etc) are hard to read against that background colour.

Second Look: Content

Admittedly, I don't know much about Modelling, so I can't really remark too much on the genre-specific content you have. I can, however, give some general remarks:

- I don't see any rules governing behaviour on the forum. This isn't really always necessary, but if you're looking to expand and perhaps reach a new audience, having some general guidelines on basic forum etiquette might be beneficial.

- It might be good to add a little welcome table at the top to give a quick explanation of the forum, list out the staff / admin, and add in some affiliates or important links. Some questions that occur to me that having a welcome table would solve: a) who is the admin? b) can anyone join, or just NJ residents? c) what if I don't know a lot about modelling, what are some good resources?

- It is a wee bit concerning that most of the posts seem to be in the "General" forum. That sometimes gives off a red flag to prospective members who are looking for a niche forum, as it could indicate that there is more off-topic chatting than there is on-topic chatting. You could combine a few boards into a single board and make use of the "subboard" feature (eg: You can have a single board for all of the JSMCC Meeting information, and then have those three boards as subboards). It'll give those boards the appearance of being busier at a first glance, so that the content of the general chat is not as overwhelming. Similarly, boards that currently have a one- or two-thread content level (eg: the Metal and Chrome board) could probably be folded into another discussion board as a subboard and then moved out again if there's an activity spike in that board.

Suggestions:

The first suggestion I have for you is to go old school with your marketing / advertisement. You seem to attend a lot of in-person events, so order some business cards and pass them out, especially if you are presenting your work at any of these events. If you have some extra cash, take out an advertisement in local modelling newsletters, things like that. I don't normally suggest this for forums, but since modelling is a "real world" activity that already connects people in person, it's a great way to catch the attention of people who might not be online enough to discover your forum on their own.

If you accept non-NJ residents, then I agree that having "New Jersey" in the forum name is misleading. HOWEVER, if your primary goal is to connect NJ modellers with having non-NJ residents taking part as a secondary goal, then keep the name; a welcome table can explain that all modellers are welcome, but events etc will centre around Jersey while you're still growing and expanding the group.

I don't know anything about your JSMCC group! How do they meet? How does one join? For example, let's pretend I still lived in Edison. Could I attend one of your meetings if I were interested? Or is everything done online? -- This type of information could draw interest from local NJ residents too. What if there are people interested, but leave because they don't understand how to join the club?

Affiliates and advertising is a good way to increase your SEO (search engine optimisation). In a nutshell, the more a link to your forum appears online, attached to non-spam content (other legitimate sites, like here on Support, social media, other forums), the higher chances of indexing bots stumbling across the link. The more time your page is indexed -- meaning, an indexing bot catalogues the key (organically [ie: not spam] repeating) words on your forum + attaches those key words to your listing, the better your chances of climbing through the search engine results. This can take a LONG time to do when you're not a multi-million dollar organisation, so have patience!

Overall:

I think you have the makings of a nice, if niche, forum. You just need to condense some content, give a little more information to prospective members, and advertise. A custom theme could really elevate the forum and get more people to stay and explore, but is not 100% critical.

Rating: 7/10 - On its way, but could use some improvement.

I hope this helps. Good luck!

[firemist001]

Kami,

I really appreciate your in-depth review of my message board, and I really like the way you graded the appearance of my board - on a scale of 1 to 10. As for your suggestions, here is what I have done and what I plan to do. 

1.) Interestingly enough, one of the members had cards printed up for the forum. Looking back, I think it was the right idea but the wrong execution because I gave a few of the cards to people I spoke to, but distributed the vast majority of them to local hobby shops where I feel they are probably just sitting in a pile somewhere. I think I am going to have new ones printed up but I am considering changing the name of forum in the hopes of appealing to a larger audience who live in different areas. When the new ones get printed, I will present most of them in person.

2.) Since scale modeling is somewhat of an old-school hobby that is in decline, I feel I have to try to appeal to people in other areas in order to attract enough members. 

3.) You made an excellent point about the club - JSMCC, because part of the message board's function is to promote the "Bricks and Mortar" Model Car Club. I will have to find a way to incorporate information about the club in the board or its formatting. 

4.) I got in touch with the admin of another board, and hopefully we can get some sort of affiliation going, but I have some learning to do. 

As for the boards appearance, I tried to do the best I could with the minimal skills I had. I have kicked the idea around of paying someone who is more skilled at design in an effort to make it more appealing; which is another possibility but I will have to find out how much it cost and decide what I am willing to spend. All this is probably going to take me a fair amount of time, because I have a bunch of other pots boiling on the stove. 

Thanks again for your very thoughtful and in-depth review. At this point, I wanted to get back to you with my thoughts in an effort to show you that I value your efforts, and your message has gotten across. I am not asking for any more additional help, but you may want to check back in 6 months or so and see what happens as a result of your efforts. 

Best Regards!


 

[rbear]

Sept 11, 2019 11:43:16 GMT -8 CrazyBoy said:

Sept 11, 2019 11:41:34 GMT -8 firemist001 said:

Ismail.

One other question for you, how do you know the visitors are bots? Does it have something to do with the number users online vs. most users online? If you get a chance let me know.

click on 56 Guests (for example)
and you'll see IPs are similar that's mean they're bots
148....
63....
these are bots 

Sorry I'm new to all this. Can you explain "bots" and how are IP's 148 and 63 similar?

[CrazyBoy]

Nov 24, 2019 9:17:14 GMT -8 rbear said:

Sept 11, 2019 11:43:16 GMT -8 CrazyBoy said:

click on 56 Guests (for example)
and you'll see IPs are similar that's mean they're bots
148....
63....
these are bots 

Sorry I'm new to all this. Can you explain "bots" and how are IP's 148 and 63 similar?

BTW you'll learn
click on guests in the table of information which show you who is onine,
then see the IPs they'll be similar