Maybe I'm the only one who does know what they are. I was pretty excited watching the LA Auto Show stuff. And to be honest, I was even more excited to have an opportunity to be the first to create a forum for something brand new; finally a forum that would technically have no competitors. I didn't create one though, but you did, so that's cool.
I have a few suggestions. Well, I have a lot, but I'll start with these for now:
I could be wrong about this, but I believe it is always best to have a .com domain to get the most traffic to your site/for SEO purposes/it just looks cleaner. I know there are exceptions nowadays, but I still believe in this age old rule. It's really not too late to switch to a .com! rivianautoclub.com, rivianforum.com, rivianowners.com - etc. I would be way more inclined to join.
Along with the URL, I think your sub-directory would look more professional as /forum instead of /xf. And that's only if you intend to ever create a homepage in the future. If you know you always want to the forum to be the homepage/main purpose of the website, I would just move the whole forum to the home directory.
I don't see Rivian writing it as RIVIAN except on the emblem on the vehicle. You also use Rivian throughout the site. So, maybe for consistency, change the forum title to Rivian Auto Club instead of RIVIAN Auto Club. That said, I don't know if I would personally use that name since your main "competitor" (I know it is a totally different brand) uses that name (Tesla Motors Club).
The simplicity of the forum categories is good. No need to have extra forums that won't have many posts in them yet. But I would change the name of the main category to something that isn't default XenForo and also rewrite the description of the Community forum, which feels a little weird when reading it. Also, maybe add at least one off-topic forum, though I could understand why you may not want one.
The sidebar on the right is much longer than the list of forums. You could move some of that around to display under the forums list, like the social media one, members online, and stats. That would even things out a bit for now.
Lastly, your skin works. Simple is good. But if you want to become THE Rivian forum as the company starts to become more popular, a professionally made skin is always better.
I'm very interested in seeing what you do with the forum since it is the first of its kind which is usually a good thing!
rivianauto.club
