Hello! I'm Kami, and sometimes I rate forums.
How I Rate: I rate forums in three stages: initial impressions, aesthetic, and content. As a rule, my thoughts on each stage come from the perspective of "random internet user that may be interested in this type of forum", followed by opinions that are informed by both my hobby (RP forum admin of ~20 years) + my profession (I make video games for a living). The latter is especially helpful for RP-centric forums, but can also provide valuable insight on "new user" habits and common pain points.
The Rating: Once I go over each stage, I'll sum up my thoughts and provide a numerical rating between 1 (forum needs a lot of work to meet its goals), and 10 (forum needs minimal to no work to meet its goals). This scale is weighted differently based on the genre of the forum; eg: aesthetics will have a higher impact on overall rating if the forum is a web design community, but lower impact if it's a general chat community.
Suggestions: I might offer suggestions as part of the rating. These suggestions can be either what I would personally do, or what other similar forums have done with success.
Any and all suggestions are always optional. At the end of the day, you are the vision holder for your forum, and if something I suggest doesn't sit right with you or doesn't have the right vibes, feel 100% free to disregard. There is no "right" or "wrong" way to make a forum community, after all, it's about what
you want this space to be and what vibes that space to have.
With that out of the way, let's dig in!
Initial Impressions: Right away, the biggest stumbling block I encounter is that I cannot tell at a glance what your forum is about. Sure, I could take the time to read all of the threads and dive in, but if I'm a guest / potential new member, I'm going to want something that requires a lower amount of initial investment before committing my time to a deep dive on informational threads. One of the most common mistakes new admins make is expecting that potential members will take the time to find, and then commit 30+ minutes to read the content they've written to explain the forum in-depth. Unfortunately, that's not the case for a vast majority of potential users:
on average, it takes someone less than a minute to "give up" on a forum or website if information is not delivered to them in a way that they don't need to click around for.
- Suggestion: Most forums handle this by making some sort of "welcome table" at the top of their forum, above the boards, that greets guests and members alike and specifically states the forum's goals, along with a handful of "quick links" directing users to threads and/or custom pages that will allow users to dive in. In the case of RP forums, this is usually a greeting that say something a long the lines of "Welcome to [Forum Name] a [genre] roleplaying community!" followed by maybe a small blurb on the plot if there is one, and quick links to a deeper dive in the plot, forum rules, and any other getting started information. This is also generally where the staff of the forum are introduced, so that members and guests can see who to reach out to in the event they have issues or questions about the forum.
- Suggestion: Most RP forums specifically create a theme that helps define the vibes of the setting. From your post here on Support, I see that the forum is an "Open world / slice of life mish-mash", which is great! But the aesthetics of your theme don't really... give me that. I see some flowers and an animal skull, and I would have never guessed the genre, nor would I have realised just in a first look that this is an RP site. If I were to try and determine the purpose of the forum only by my first impressions, I would have assumed that it's either a general chat forum, or perhaps a photography forum with an emphasis on nature or desert-y themes. Fandom RPs of course have this much easier than non-fandom RPs since imagery and assets already exist for those settings, so as an original forum you're going to have to work a bit harder to get that "recognition" from an aesthetic level.
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Aesthetic: Honestly, It's not for me. It doesn't really give me the impression (especially with the lack of info as mentioned above) that it's an RP, but at the end of the day if this is the aesthetic imagery you wish to associate with your RP, it's not "wrong" by any means. The only thing I will call out about the aesthetics otherwise is an accessibility issue: the colour of your backgrounds versus the colour of your text technically pass the minimum contrast recommendation for websites, however the darker brown background colour you use for the boards and categories only partially passes when using dark brown text, and completely fails when using white text.
- Suggestion: Pick a different colour for the boards (the lighter colour you use on the alternating posts is lovely) and a different text colour for the category and title bars entirely. You can check your contrast between background colour and foreground colour »HERE«
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Content: Bear with me, this is long (sorry!). I've already mentioned that it's difficult to see at a glance what the forum is about, so we're going to skip past that and dig a bit deeper on a) how content is arranged, and b) how content is presented. Broadly, every website needs what's called a hierarchy of information. What this means is that content should be arranged on a website that guides people through what you want them to know and helps them understand (often subconsciously) the order of operations. For instance, if you decided you wanted to buy something from an online store, that online store would likely have a promotional image at the top of the site contents, showing something like a link to the "just in" products, and/or a sale they might be having, followed by some commonly shopped categories and sample items from each. Similarly, your site should guide both members and guests through the flow of what you expect them to do. Generally this means structuring the board based on most > least critical in participating on the forum's main purpose. For an RP forum, this generally means:
- A "getting started" category: these categories usually contain boards with rules, information, news, and a place to contact the staff if you've got an issue (the latter of which is often guest-friendly for posting, in case someone has some questions prior to registration).
- A "character creation" or "story development" category: these are usually where people create their characters, discuss plotlines, and find other people to roleplay with.
- An "in-character" category: self explanatory, really — boards where the actual RP takes place.
- An "OOC" category: this is where users should expect to find non-RP related social boards, advertisement / affiliation requests areas, boards to show off their creativity in non-RP ways like art or other writing, etc.
You're pretty close as to this as far the overall structure goes, but you do have rules / news + your OOC non-RP social content on the top of the forum and don't seem to have a place for guests to ask questions. Ideally, the hierarchy on this would de-emphasise the "chat about anything" to draw more focus on the RP itself + add in a guest-friendly help section in the starting area. It's a small change, but you'll likely see a decent return on investment relative to the amount of time it takes to adjust.
Next, I really want to talk about hidden content. To a degree, I can understand having certain sections being member-only. As a for instance, my own forums archives block guests from viewing our OOC art/creative boards to try and help protect people's non-RP creations. But if I'm a potential member looking to join an RP forum,
only having informational threads available to me is not going to make me want to join. How do I know if my writing style will vibe with the members / the owner? Writing is such incredibly personal work — even in fiction, and RP, everyone puts a little love into what they write. If my writing style isn't going to vibe with the existing members, I should be able to see that before I decide to join. Personally, I think a big misstep that new admins make with RP forums is worrying about "protecting" what people write in the context of the RP. It is honestly an incredibly rare occurrence; people are more likely to steal informational threads than they are ongoing RP threads because informational threads take a lot more time to create and format. Obviously, you may have other reasons for hiding in-character content, but I do want to caution that this is likely going to be a pretty massive turn-off for potential members. Genuinely, I do not know a single forum RPer that would join a forum they could not see the in-character writing on.
Following that, the lack of an info centre is broadly unappealing. While I personally do my best to eliminate extraneous information from my info centres (my forums never need the 'birthday' section or the 'RSS feed' link, etc), potential members are still going to want to see the number of accounts + the amount of threads / posts. This is probably one of the biggest metrics potential members use when determining whether or not an RP is worth their time. Everyone has different needs, as you can clearly see a sampling of in the
Looking for RP Forums thread here on Support. Having the number of accounts + amount of threads / post be visible helps potential players see if the forum activity is what they're looking for. If you have 5 members but 10,000 threads, someone looking for a small forum but slower activity would be disinterested in joining, but someone looking for a small but active community would likely get excited. Not having that information makes it a lot harder (especially if you continue to hide in-character content) for people to determine whether or not the forum is right for what they're willing to commit to, and people will simply just join somewhere else that does have that information readily available to them.
Continuing on to the shoutbox: Gently, using the shoutbox so far as a running sort of... stream-of-consciousness forum update information and microblogging about progress on setting up the forum is incredibly offputting. People want to chat in real-time, and if an admin/staff member is using the designated chatting tool (in this case, the built-in shoutbox) as an announcement board, people aren't going to get the impression that they're allowed to participate. If you want to have a chat, then let it be just that, rather than a notice board for whatever forum thing is happening. I don't mean this in a harsh way, but by and large members do not care about this information beyond what is directly going to impact them, and their stories. And guests don't care at all because they aren't even members and it doesn't really impact them unless they choose to join. (As an aside, I will say that a screencap of multiple documents that I literally cannot zoom in on to read is not how you want to be delivering this information. You have a news/announcements board. Use it! If people want to read what you're up to, that's where they'll go to find it).
To wrap up the home page, I want to talk about this little disclaimer you have at the bottom: "KOKOATA is under (C)opyright!! You cannot take our stuff!" ... Gently again,
everyone knows this. There is genuinely zero need to to specify that the content on this forum is copyrighted and that they can't take your stuff. This is why the Digital Millennium Copyright Act exists: to allow people to protect their digital content. The only time I would recommend putting a copyright disclaimer on a forum is if you've created a theme that isn't a premade. Beyond that, it literally doesn't matter and honestly the latter part of "you cannot take our stuff!" sounds like a very immature, petulant statement and it's an immediate turn off. If people want to take your stuff, they're going to do it whether or not copyright notice text is present on the forum. It does nothing to protect the content on the forum, and your copyright exists without it.
Lastly, I want to talk about your informational threads. The forum guide having 40 threads and 121 posts within is so much content to ask people to commit to. I wrote a post here on Support about creating original setting RPs that I want to partially quote from (though you can read the full post »
HERE«, and I definitely recommend it):
Again, it boils down to a user's investment: you are asking someone that has
zero context for your forum, who has
zero investment in the time you've spent on it, who has
zero emotional resonance on the topic (since this is not a fandom-based RP) to read
a hundred and twenty one posts before they can even
think about participating or creating a character. The average person reads anywhere from 100 to 250 words per minute; you have 121 posts with an average word count of approximately 200 hundred words each, sometimes more and sometimes less. That rounds up to approximately 25,000 words a user must get through to understand the basics / expectations of the forum and does not include any other informational thread in the RP areas. Going high with 250 words per minute for 25,000 words brings us to an average of 96 minutes and change to read everything, more if they read more slowly. You're asking an average guest to invest about an
hour and a half in your forum before they even join or make a character. Meanwhile, other RP forums ask folks to spend maybe 5-10 minutes to ramp up. To help illustrate my point a little more, the average run time of a feature length film is 101 minutes. You're asking a guest to spend the same amount of time understanding your forum before they participate for the same length as a literal movie. You do you, but you have to ask yourself: why would anyone who doesn't know you and isn't invested in your idea yet do that instead of doing literally anything else that'll take them an hour and a half?
I have no dedicated suggestions here, really. Content is the part of the review where it's really what you want and what you're going for; I'm just here to provide food for thought.
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Summary: Overall, I think you have the makings of a good
idea but are focusing on the wrong things in the execution. There's more effort placed in dictating the specific ways you want people to RP and boxing them into a really tight set of parameters instead of focusing on the basics and trying to build a community. If I were in the market for a new RP forum, with where your forum is currently I would likely pass and move on to the next forum. I don't really want to spend time to read 121 posts to understand what the forum is about and what your expectations are on top of not being able to see any in-character content, while I'm being yelled at by the copyright notice that I'm not allowed to steal anything, which frankly is kind of insulting as a guest that the forum staff think that's even something on my mind (though I'm certain that wasn't your intent). Truthfully, the ideas here and how you want them to be executed by players feels more like you should be pitching this as a video game, as opposed to a play-by-post text RP.
Rating: 4/10. I really enjoy open-world / slice of life RPs, but I think that this is way too restrictive and information-heavy for the average hobbyist RPer to even consider joining.
