Gorgeous site, Davyc. I love how you blended stargate and starfleet in your logo. Brilliant!
Many thanks for the compliments - I wanted to embrace both franchises into a logo and after a lot of searching this was the one that looked the best without detracting from each other. There is also another little twist in the main graphic on the home page where the Stargate emblem is merged into the deflector array on the Enterprise - just a little touch to bring the two together.
I love both franchises and everything that has come from them. I understand that some people are not very happy (some even hateful) of the new Star Trek series' that have emerged, but for me, they are like chocolate; I love all chocolate, but I do like some better than others lol.
I would like to see more activity from fans and I do push and promote the site on Social Media. I did a survey on Twitter asking people how they viewed forums and whether they found them easy to navigate; I've put the results below which are quite revealing:
I find it sad that 37.5% of those who responded (about 100) don't like forums at all, almost 20% found them confusing and 6% found them really hard to use. The number of respondents was not as many as I'd have liked, but the percentages are quite revealing and it would have been interesting to see how they would have moved (if at all) had the numbers been greater.
I also did another survey about the theme colours of websites in general rather than forum-specific and this was the result:
I also did another survey on the devices used to access the Internet and it was no surprise to find that mobile phones were the favourite:
I don't for one instant believe that these surveys can be indicative of everyone, but they did make for some interesting results and provided me with the information I needed to move forward. I'm going to be looking at different ways to make using the site easier.
The one thing that I do believe is that more surveys should be undertaken to better understand people's usage of the Internet and what it is that forums can do better to make for a more positive experience for users and potentially allows for more traction to be gained in terms of sign-ups and contributions.
I hope that this helps somewhat in understanding the issues faced by forums; I truly believe that forums are a far more enriched place for people to gravitate towards, but Social Media makes it even easier for people to use.
