Pokévolution l Not Just Another Pokémon Community

[MasonK]

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Pokévolution is a growing community that focuses on user generated content involving the discussion of strategies, predictions, and current news of the Pokémon franchise. Being able to have tournaments, and at our core, the main focus is the Pokémon games. We strive to stand out from the crowd by constantly adding new additions for the Pokémon fans. We hope to make Pokévolution the place to be for all Pokémon fans!

I appreciate any feedback, both good and bad, but please make sure it is constructive criticism and to keep in mind that we are still working on getting content on the site, such as, articles, posts, etc.

 

[TickTackk]

"Pause Infinite Scrolling" seems to have a border with empty background for some reason. Forum statistics on both sidebar and bottom seems to be eating space, maybe remove statistics from the bottom? A huge header for no reason?

Just an idea, add an option to disable automatically changing background per visitor because while reading this thread I kept getting distracted

 

[Mike Edge]

The backgrounds are too bright, being that bright they make your eyes squint. Also them rotating is very distracting. Reading any post, you tend to lose track of place of reading when the bright image rotates to another with clashing colors.

Top space of the header is too large, takes up 70% of my browser before even seeing any content.

Hope this info helps!

 

[JABRONI]

Personally, I would allow guests to see the entire site. I wanted to check out stuff like Episode Guides & the EvolutionDex, but I can't. This doesn't make me want to sign up; this makes me want to X out of your site.

 

[Disaster Area]

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Pokévolution is a growing community that focuses on user generated content involving the discussion of strategies, predictions, and current news of the Pokémon franchise. Being able to have tournaments, and at our core, the main focus is the Pokémon games. We strive to stand out from the crowd by constantly adding new additions for the Pokémon fans. We hope to make Pokévolution the place to be for all Pokémon fans!

I appreciate any feedback, both good and bad, but please make sure it is constructive criticism and to keep in mind that we are still working on getting content on the site, such as, articles, posts, etc.

I'm just curious but what separates you from other Pokemon forums [Smogon, Serebii, Marriland, Pokemon Perfect, Nugget Bridge, Pokebeach, others..]? Discussion of strategy at varying levels happens on all of those, as well as tournaments (Smogon and Pokemon Perfect are more notable for their own Tournaments, whilst Nugget Bridge is the community focussed on Nintendo-endorsed formats). In terms of TCG I don't quite know - what aspects of the game are you focussed on, is it TGC or Cartridge or stuff like Stadium - is it VGC or Leagues or your own formats? Do you use simulator play or the system as present on the 3DS (and older handhelds). Is it jut about generation 6 or does it cover older generations? What sort of news do you have, and how does it compete with more news-oriented Poké-sites such as Serebii and Pokebeach? What sort of userbase do you have? How many users are signed up, messages, et cetera? How long has your forum been around for? Do you have any experiences from other communities that you've learnt from?

All my questions aside, I quite like the colour scheme and the background although I find the homepage a bit muddled and difficult to follow.

 

[Optic]

Theme is quite pleasing to the eye. Maybe add a drop shadow or bezel to your logo as it can be difficult to read on the lighter background images.

Your front page portal looks a little cluttered, two ways I suggest you address this:

1. Truncate the amount of text shown for each thread on your portal. It's not necessary to show the full text of the first post on your portal. A short snippet is enough.
2. Troubleshoot why some images are broken from the front page portal. Broken images are something you should fix as a priority especially as it's on your home page due to first impressions.

I see that you fixed the permissions on the Episode Guide and EvolutionDex.

...keep in mind that we are still working on getting content on the site, such as, articles, posts, etc.

You've created a very large scope of work:

• News Articles
• Episode Guides
• EvolutionDex
• Strategy Guides
• Movie Guides
• And on top of that your normal forum discussions

You may need to tighten your focus to 1-2 areas as the EvolutionDex alone will take up a lot of your contributor's time, assuming you're doing one record for each character that's 721 manual pages you and your Contributors will have to create.. There are public character databases available, you may want to look into tapping into them. Though this will likely require a custom importer, you minimise manual data entry.

Tightening your focus will also make your community stand out more with a particular strength as @Disaster Area has noted - your niche appears to be a very competitive one with well established communities already. You will need to market a compelling reason for people to join yours over theirs.

 

[m1ne]

Things that need changing the most..

Header size. It's just empty.

Number of forums. You could probably lose 50% of them, utilize thread prefixes instead. You have 4 "General Discussion" areas, use just one and prefix them with 'Anime', 'Games', 'WiFi', and so on. Gaming, Literature, Everything Else, not necessary at all.

Darken and blur those backgrounds, the logo becomes difficult to see on some of them. The constantly changing background is kind of annoying too, perhaps using a different background image per forum would look better? This should help if you like that idea.

Get some Pokemon themed node icons.

The portal is a mess. 2 columns, broken images, sliders. It's chaos.

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Anyway, I love the implementation of favorite Pokemon on posts. Speaking of posts, there are too many icons. Awards, favorites, inventory. It's too much.
Maybe I can't see because I'm not registered, but if you don't have a currency/credits system named Pokedollars, you definitely should.
It's a nice start, just tidy things up and make it look less hectic.

 

[MasonK]

Thank you very much for everyone's suggestions and feedback so far. I am going to work on all of these things over the week and then come back to each of you separately, showing you the changes that have been made.

Edit:

Number of forums. You could probably lose 50% of them, utilize thread prefixes instead. You have 4 "General Discussion" areas, use just one and prefix them with 'Anime', 'Games', 'WiFi', and so on. Gaming, Literature, Everything Else, not necessary at all.

Do you have a specific layout in mind?

 

[Akame]

I like the new style you've used on pokevolution, and the way it was customised. Comparing pokevolution from when you first made this thread to know, it's come a long way. Keep up the great work!