The Money Shed

[shabbadoof]

Hi guys and gals!

I'm after hearing your thoughts on my forum The Money Shed

It's been running since 2013 and was first on SMF where it sat for a number of years. I then migrated over to XenForo at the start of this year and have in the last week moved up to version 2.0 and also for the first time bought a theme so am using UI.X (I've actually got their Christmas plugin running at the moment, hence the winter theme!)

Alongside the forum I have a full-on blog which runs alongside it (you can see it here) and I'd love to incorporate the content a bit more than I do at the moment on the forum so would welcome ideas on that.

Thanks in advance!

Jon

 

[Yugensoft]

Looks good.

My inklings on what could be improved are as follows though:

The most important thing for a potential registrant when they see a new forum is: "is it alive". They want to see, as quickly as possible, that this is a legit active community, that discussions are actively going on, and that they'd have interest in participating in those discussions, etc. (Obviously for a blog, the most important thing is good content).

After your front page loads, the only thing that indicates it's live to me is the "over 100,000 posts and growing" text in the banner. But a visitor will interpret that as a claim, not evidence (evidence is when they actually see the forums full of threads), and they don't know if it's not "100,000 old posts but now dead". There are no other immediate signs that the forum is alive. Users will make their minds up in a split second whether to bother with the site, or move onto the next google result. For instance, my mouse has a back button and a close tab button which I tend to just hit immediately if I suspect something could waste my time (there's a lot of trash on the internet).

So that big "welcome to our community" banner is just pushing all the evidence of liveliness down the page. I have to scroll a full page length down to start seeing threads. I have to scroll about 3 page lengths down until "latest posts" comes into view.

So you might want to consider just making that banner a small panel in the right column instead (or even just get rid of it and maybe just highlight the Register button), and maybe re-ordering the "quick links" below "members online" and/or "latest posts". Usually users sign up after they feel a reason to (e.g. they read a thread and want to reply to it), because sign up takes effort (putting in your details, doing a Captcha, confirming an email etc). A big request banner for them to sign up isn't really much of a motivator.

Also that "powered by freewind" is an eyesore, and is also pushing content down. I have no idea what "freewind" is, so it's just distracting. If it's branding attached to an add-on, you might want to consider paying them for a branding-free version.

The theme and style does look professional though. It gives me confidence that "this is a legit site".

Also the mixing in of blog articles is a good idea. But on your blog, your logo is filling the entirety of the page, so I have to scroll down a whole page until I can see content. Also people aren't used to having to read text as big as in that logo on their computer screen.

Hope that was helpful.

 

[Mr Lucky]

I joined this a couple of weeks ago, haven't yet had much time to post yet beyond my initial post about online accounting (Yes, it was me who mentioned I couldn't find where to introduce myself as it's a thread rather than an obvious forum)

Also, as I mentioned, the welcome PC seemed a bit spammy (and that link to the introduction thread is buried right at the bottom uder the special offers.

 

[shabbadoof]

Looks good.

My inklings on what could be improved are as follows though:

The most important thing for a potential registrant when they see a new forum is: "is it alive". They want to see, as quickly as possible, that this is a legit active community, that discussions are actively going on, and that they'd have interest in participating in those discussions, etc. (Obviously for a blog, the most important thing is good content).

After your front page loads, the only thing that indicates it's live to me is the "over 100,000 posts and growing" text in the banner. But a visitor will interpret that as a claim, not evidence (evidence is when they actually see the forums full of threads), and they don't know if it's not "100,000 old posts but now dead". There are no other immediate signs that the forum is alive. Users will make their minds up in a split second whether to bother with the site, or move onto the next google result. For instance, my mouse has a back button and a close tab button which I tend to just hit immediately if I suspect something could waste my time (there's a lot of trash on the internet).

So that big "welcome to our community" banner is just pushing all the evidence of liveliness down the page. I have to scroll a full page length down to start seeing threads. I have to scroll about 3 page lengths down until "latest posts" comes into view.

So you might want to consider just making that banner a small panel in the right column instead (or even just get rid of it and maybe just highlight the Register button), and maybe re-ordering the "quick links" below "members online" and/or "latest posts". Usually users sign up after they feel a reason to (e.g. they read a thread and want to reply to it), because sign up takes effort (putting in your details, doing a Captcha, confirming an email etc). A big request banner for them to sign up isn't really much of a motivator.

Also that "powered by freewind" is an eyesore, and is also pushing content down. I have no idea what "freewind" is, so it's just distracting. If it's branding attached to an add-on, you might want to consider paying them for a branding-free version.

The theme and style does look professional though. It gives me confidence that "this is a legit site".

Also the mixing in of blog articles is a good idea. But on your blog, your logo is filling the entirety of the page, so I have to scroll down a whole page until I can see content. Also people aren't used to having to read text as big as in that logo on their computer screen.

Hope that was helpful.

Hi @Yugensoft - Thanks for the very detailed feedback.

Interesting comments about needing to see the forum as 'alive' when a new person visits. Are there any ways you think I could do that beyond the 'latest posts' type widget you get on the right hand side.

The 'freewind' thing is just the RSS feeder I use to fund the two latest blog posts to the front page of the forum.

Good point about the blog logo, i'll look into that

 

[shabbadoof]

I joined this a couple of weeks ago, haven't yet had much time to post yet beyond my initial post about online accounting (Yes, it was me who mentioned I couldn't find where to introduce myself as it's a thread rather than an obvious forum)

Also, as I mentioned, the welcome PC seemed a bit spammy (and that link to the introduction thread is buried right at the bottom uder the special offers.

Hi @Mr Lucky

Don't worry, I'll get that introductions part moved in the welcome email.

That email does so amazing well though with people pushing through my affiliate and earning the site (and myself) money

 

[Yugensoft]

Interesting comments about needing to see the forum as 'alive' when a new person visits. Are there any ways you think I could do that beyond the 'latest posts' type widget you get on the right hand side.

I've seen some forums where they add some subtle animated element. E.g. some forums have a "featured thread" addon, which rotates through a list of current featured threads/articles etc. Obviously animation tends to be annoying, so they make it subtle. "Animated" is unconsciously associated with life, so it biases users to assume something is going on until they get evidence otherwise.

Also anything involving the concept of "recent", or more powerfully: "upcoming". If a forum speaks of an upcoming event, interview, promotion, or whatever, clearly there are things going on in that forum.

 

[shabbadoof]

I've seen some forums where they add some subtle animated element. E.g. some forums have a "featured thread" addon, which rotates through a list of current featured threads/articles etc. Obviously animation tends to be annoying, so they make it subtle.

Also anything involving the concept of "recent", or more powerfully: "upcoming". If a forum speaks of an upcoming event, interview, promotion, or whatever, clearly there are things going on in that forum.

Interesting idea about the 'featured thread' - I'll give that some thought.

I've just reduced the size of the header on the blog you'll be pleased to know

 

[Yugensoft]

I've just reduced the size of the header on the blog you'll be pleased to know

It's better, but on desktop it's still forcing down the content a lot (I can only see the title), because of the pound sign. (Compare it with mobile, where I can still see the logo prominently, but I'm also seeing interesting content which is taking up more than 50% of the vertical space).

It might be OK (i.e. your marketing concept is to put the pound sign, which indicates money, right in their face), but it's just something to factor in: pound sign on the top of the logo, versus on the side.

 

[DieselMinded]

Joined and date should be on the same line

 

[EricLobster]

The theme and style does look professional though. It gives me confidence that "this is a legit site". Also the mixing in of blog articles is a good idea. But on your blog, your logo is filling the entirety of the page, so I have to scroll down a whole page until I can see content. Also people aren't used to having to read text as big as in that logo on their computer screen. Hope that was helpful.

Absolutely agree and great feedback Yugensoft. One of the key things (Not just with forums) is the actual look of the site. Looking the part is really 80% of the game. Only thing I would change is the "read more" button on your blog. Looks dull. Try a more lighter color scheme on them. Something that's easy on the eyes. Great job overall.

 

[shabbadoof]

Absolutely agree and great feedback Yugensoft. One of the key things (Not just with forums) is the actual look of the site. Looking the part is really 80% of the game. Only thing I would change is the "read more" button on your blog. Looks dull. Try a more lighter color scheme on them. Something that's easy on the eyes. Great job overall.

Hi Eric

Thanks for the comments.

Jon

 

[Mr Lucky]

Just a heads up, my welcome email got a high spam bar score of +++ so went straight into my spam folder

  1.1 KAM_COUK               Scoring .co.uk emails higher due to poor registry security.
  0.0 URIBL_BLOCKED          ADMINISTRATOR NOTICE: The query to URIBL was blocked.
                             See
                             http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/DnsBlocklists#dnsbl-block
                              for more information.
                             [URIs: imgur.com]
  0.0 T_SPF_TEMPERROR        SPF: test of record failed (temperror)
  0.8 BAYES_50               BODY: Bayes spam probability is 40 to 60%
                             [score: 0.5000]
  0.0 HTML_MESSAGE           BODY: HTML included in message
 -0.1 DKIM_VALID_AU          Message has a valid DKIM or DK signature from author's
                             domain
  0.1 DKIM_SIGNED            Message has a DKIM or DK signature, not necessarily valid
 -0.1 DKIM_VALID             Message has at least one valid DKIM or DK signature
  0.0 LOTS_OF_MONEY          Huge... sums of money
  0.0 T_MONEY_PERCENT        X% of a lot of money for you
  1.9 MONEY_FRAUD_3          Lots of money and several fraud phrases

 

[shabbadoof]

Just a heads up, my welcome email got a high spam bar score of +++ so went straight into my spam folder

  1.1 KAM_COUK               Scoring .co.uk emails higher due to poor registry security.
  0.0 URIBL_BLOCKED          ADMINISTRATOR NOTICE: The query to URIBL was blocked.
                             See
                             http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/DnsBlocklists#dnsbl-block
                              for more information.
                             [URIs: imgur.com]
  0.0 T_SPF_TEMPERROR        SPF: test of record failed (temperror)
  0.8 BAYES_50               BODY: Bayes spam probability is 40 to 60%
                             [score: 0.5000]
  0.0 HTML_MESSAGE           BODY: HTML included in message
-0.1 DKIM_VALID_AU          Message has a valid DKIM or DK signature from author's
                             domain
  0.1 DKIM_SIGNED            Message has a DKIM or DK signature, not necessarily valid
-0.1 DKIM_VALID             Message has at least one valid DKIM or DK signature
  0.0 LOTS_OF_MONEY          Huge... sums of money
  0.0 T_MONEY_PERCENT        X% of a lot of money for you
  1.9 MONEY_FRAUD_3          Lots of money and several fraud phrases

Yeah the topic of 'money' or more specifically 'money making' does cause a lot of emails to end up in spam sadly.

The number of PRs or companies I have contact me about wanting a sponsored post on our blog and just end up straight into the Spam folder when they aren't infuriates me!!

 

[Mr Lucky]

I've never understood the registry security issue of .co.uk though