Earth One

[ToriJ]

earthone.proboards.com/

I'm mainly looking for feedback on the forum skin, the board layout, and the site content. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated. 

[ToriJ]

Bump.

[ToriJ]

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[ToriJ]

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[ToriJ]

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[Kami]

Hello! Have some downtime at work so I thought I'd pop in and give this a rate.

How I Rate
I look at three overall categories: First Impressions, Design, and Content. I may also provide a few suggestions on how I would personally improve things. Lastly, I provide a summary of my opinion and an overall score out of ten. This is a sliding scale though, so don't worry if your forum scores higher or lower than another rating I gave; I take into consideration the intent of the forum when I review, and adjust accordingly.

Now that's out of the way, here's my review:

First Impressions
- Hm, seems to call back to early/mid 00s forums
- Having a hard time reading link colour
- Having a hard time reading category text
- Background not well placed for different resolutions
- RP topic initially confusing; theme / forum name imply some sort of SciFi, multiverse plot, but RP area only covers Kansas City (which Kansas City?)

Second Look: Design
The design is very plain, which isn't bad, but doesn't particularly tickle my fancy. The biggest issue for me is the blue category/title bars with the black text. The colour contrast is poor and fails accessibility guidelines both from a technical and practical perspective (I am struggling to read the text even with my glasses on). The blue links on black text are similarly difficult, but less so than the title bars.

The banner is all right, though the paper/canvas texture on it makes it look very outdated. I would remove the texture, keep the vignette, and remove the drop shadow on the text for a cleaner, more modern look. Possibly would also remove the white outline around the earth image, but not 100% sure. Would also fix the kerning on the text.

I don't have any other real callouts because this is just the basic theme with some colours changed and a banner + on/off icons added.

Second Look: Content
Everything looks decently busy, so that's great—nothing is empty, with a "starter thread" in every board.

I see now that you have a premise thread, which does confirm that my initial impressions on a SciFi/Multiverse theme was correct. However, the initial confusion still presents a problem from a first impressions standpoint, so I would recommend having a table or div in the header that gives visitors the premise at a glance (or a synopsis of it, linking to the thread as a "read more"). A variety of studies show that a user spends 5-30 seconds on a web page before deciding whether or not to navigate away, so try and capitalise on that time frame as much as possible—your plot serves as your "hook", so make sure it's readily available when a potential member first lands on the forum.

Organisation seems OK, though if it were me I'd put the character creation content in its own category, and then do the same for RP discussion, just to have a clearer separation between RP things and non-RP things.

The meet the staff thread is a useful idea, but I find it less practical in execution; I already knew these three were staff because of the member group colours, so "meeting" the staff imo should provide a short bio of each. If applicable, their roles should be described so that people know who to contact for certain things.

Are face claims mandatory? Nothing seems to state explicitly whether or not they are, even under the most logical place (character creation rules).

Lastly, a bit of a nitpick: you allow "canon" characters but "canon" means (among other things) official/from the source—it sounds like what you're going after is a split between OCs and established characters from other fandoms, so I would change the wording here because the implication is that Earth One has canon (ie: official characters from its own story) characters, like the plot character Tori/Gaia. Perhaps "Fandom Character" or "Multiverse Character"?

Overall
I think it's a solid start. I'm not sure how I feel about the plot/setting, but that's more a subjective thing. The objective things—organisation, content—are pretty good. My recommendation would be to make some minor Quality of Life tweaks to design and content as noted above. A custom theme might entice new players but it's not required. One thing I think stands out is that you introduce a plot and balance it well with giving players free reign without completely bombarding them with information. It's a rarity in original RPs, so kudos on that.

Rating: 7/10 — solid start, needs some improvements

Good luck!

[ToriJ]

Hey thanks. 7/10 is a solid rating, so thank you. I'll take your advice into consideration, but I'll need to get help on the skin because I don't currently have the means to make my own graphics right now. But I'll talk to my friend who made the site graphics about what you mentioned.

I'm thinking I should find a welcome table (Can't remember what they're called) to put at the top of the forum to plug people with the plot. Didn't even think about the canon definition, just been used to using that word a lot.

Thank you for taking the time to look at this.

[Kami]

You have a couple choices for welcome tables, but to be honest a simple div would do. Something like:

<div class="container">
  <div class="title-bar">
    <h2>Your Welcome Table Title Here</h2>
  </div>
  <div class="content">
    Whatever you want to put in here
  </div>
</div>

would suffice if you just needed a single-cell thing. Alternatively, you could use the dynamically tabbed table plugin if you need to display more than a single cell's worth of info.

Also you're welcome! I wish you the best of luck with your forum (:

[ToriJ]

Thanks for that. I was looking all over for a decent welcome table.

[Kami]

You're welcome!

[ToriJ]

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[ToriJ]

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[ToriJ]

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[ToriJ]

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[ToriJ]

Bump.