Critiques for GameHandout's Forum

[Xyphien]

http://www.gamehandout.com/forum

A few people are working on the basic thread topics right now which is why this isn't an advertisement, but rather for some critiques. That also being said, we're aware of the fact that it doesn't have many topics and messages, we won't be advertising this for a while.

We have the website and the forum linked together, so joining one will join both of them, GameHandout is a news indie blog that also gives away games quite often. We made the forum to turn it away from only being a news blog, into a community as well.

If anyone wishes to check out the site, and give me some basic feedback on everything but the activity on the forum.

 

[Sheldon]

I think messages like this after a while would become very annoying.

 

[xIsabel38]

As @Sheldon pointed out, you're using a very light font color on a very light background. Simply changing the font color to a darker blue might be more beneficial for some of your users.

Looking at your forum theme it looks like a very nice and clean style, but it doesn't speak to me of the theme of your site. For example: if I just so happened to stumble on your forum without really knowing anything about it, I may not even know it was gaming related. The overall theme has no underlying mention of the genre and I think that's an important thing to accomplish. Imagine looking at your forum without any forum categories or posts written at all, can you tell it is gaming related? I think a simple banner with controllers or Xbox/PS buttons or something would be beneficial.

There's also barely a mention of the genre in your actual forum titles.

You have a Category that says "Gaming" but then you have forums under that which say "Blog Posts" "General" "Media Sharing" etc... while these may tie into gaming, it's not the first impression given. Maybe you should consider having the forum titles as major consoles such as PlayStation 4, Xbox One, etc... and then put the blog posts or reviews and whatnot into sub-categories so people that want to see PS4 gaming reviews can find it under the PS4 board and so on.

These are my first impressions anyway. The site looks nice and clean but simply doesn't look like a gaming site. I also found no obvious link to go to your forum from the homepage.

 

[Xyphien]

Thank you all for the help, I've changed the text to a dark blue. As for the theme, and most of the rest is because the forum is an addon to the website. It's not just for gaming, but more for the website and the community of it. We won't add consoles and things until we get bigger, and more active. The website's theme is an amazing one with lots of features, and our whole site, and look is built around the theme, which is why the forum and the website have it.

I do appreciate the honesty, and the help, so thank you all once again

 

[xIsabel38]

That font color is much better and much easier on the eyes. Good luck with the site!

 

[Carlos]

You have a Category that says "Gaming" but then you have forums under that which say "Blog Posts" "General" "Media Sharing" etc... while these may tie into gaming, it's not the first impression given. Maybe you should consider having the forum titles as major consoles such as PlayStation 4, Xbox One, etc... and then put the blog posts or reviews and whatnot into sub-categories so people that want to see PS4 gaming reviews can find it under the PS4 board and so on.

I think I know where he's going with the forum categories that you mentioned. He wants to bring "user blogs" (and media, reviews) from that particular forum, and into the main page, which is exactly what MP1st is doing for Multiplayer gaming.

 

[Xyphien]

I've fixed a lot of bugs, we now have several people helping with the dcontent, as well as added a few new features. Medals are now a part of the forum which is something I've been planning for a while, I think the size is a bit to big personally, if anyone can comment on that, that'd be very nice. I've also fixed the quote text box which was unreadable, feedback on that would be nice as well.

Thank you all once again who helped earlier. I greatly appreciate it, as well as all future feedback, regardless of good or bad.

 

[Moshe1010]

Check how users avatars look like in a thread via mobile.

 

[Bryan Gilchrist]

The joystick looks like another kind of joystick...if you catch my drift.

Other than that, the site looks nice.