Your review is anticipated!

[glenvw]

<a href="http://www.warmislands.com/tropical_island_forums/" target="_blank">http://www.warmislands.com/tropical_island_forums/</a>

It is a long established site with excellent content in the main site. However, I cannot get people to register and participate. I am looking for some real critical advice from experienced forum owners. Please remember though, the audience is not young people looking for games or videos - rather, it is a highly targeted audience interested in travel.

Am I missing soemthing? Is something not set up correctly? What could I do to my home page to lead people to the forum and entice them to register? Any mods that may help?

Thanks in advance!

Glen

[Shelley_c]

I am reviewing from a visual perspective and I can tell you that your site (visually) doesn't look very inviting. It's another one of those run of the mill styles which comprise of default vbulletin images and custom images where you've been bothered to implement them.

Mixing custom and default images for a style only looks bad so I would suggest either staying default or go totally custom (a good thing).

Your logo is very small and could be better if you enlarged it and give it a little more prominence, something that will grab the attention of those guests/lurkers so that they know when they first look at it they know what your site is all about.

The side menus are a waste of space for the simple fact that you haven't got anything inserted into them. Atleast untill you put ads in implement some kind of navigation system and insert links to important areas on your site.

I'd seriously look into re-designing the style as it looks like you haven't put much effort into it. You get out of a site what you put in (nobody ever said it would be easy) so I'd suggest using warm tropical colours and then instead of having the default forum status icons implement some relevant icons (palm trees, cruise ships etc).

Everything for me just looks plain and boring (which is probably the reason you haven't got many registrations) so for the now work on a new style, apply relevant images so it's basically a stepping stone.

Goodluck.

[glenvw]

Thanks - I agree - I could utilize the theme from the main site / log etc and integrate them in to the forum. Now if you said the main site www.warmislands.com was uninviting I would have to take issue with that :-)

However, I assume you are just talking about the forum.

You mentioned nothing in the side columns - aren't there adsense ads showing up on the left column?

Thanks!

[Doctor Dan]

Hi Glen --

I agree with Shelley_c that your forum needs a bit of a visual make-over. I would suggest using the color scheme of your portal page (sky blue / orange) on your forum style so that the forum looks more unified, increasing the size of the logo, and doing some customization of the icons. For example, using palm tree icons for forum indicators would add a nice personalized touch.

To attract more forum traffic, I'd mention your forum more prominently on the portal page. Give your forum its own paragraph with header and talk it up!

In general, I'm not a big fan of advertisement panes in forums, but I also realize that they're a necessary revenue stream for many.

- Dan

[glenvw]

Thank you both for your thoughts. I am not discounting your input at all as I am a big advocate of a clean design. However, I see many boards using the simple board design and experiencing good participation. In my opinion this site http://boards.cruisecritic.com/ has a design inferior to mine (overall) although they do have a big header and look at the participation of the board - unbelievable.

I realize you both are looking at this through the eyes of a designer and I do indeed appreciate it. Looking for all the help I can get,

[Doctor Dan]

The other site's greater forum participation may be due to a number of reasons: larger website user base, site has existed for a much longer period of time, advertising, etc.

As I mentioned previously, a prominent write-up and link to the forum on your site's portal page would be an excellent start to increasing traffic.

- Dan

[R1lover]

It's clean and simple, I like that!

[cheat-master30]

A few things:

1. The default images do not go well with a forum except the official ones for vBulletin. They certainly don't match your theme too well, and if I were you, I'd change them for ones related to tropical island vacations and cruises.

2. Don't worry about the activity difference between your site and the big site, and certainly don't rely on them for design tips. This is because for one thing, they've been around EIGHT years, and you have been around 3 years. Their site is therefore double as old as yours and nearly three times so, so not having their activity is kinda understandable, because it built up over time. You are doing fine member wise, but in my opinion a bit lacking post wise. You therefore need more posts, and more resources to improve your forum, and perhaps some less forums (at the moment, having FIFTY forums available is overkill for that many posts, so maybe make them a bit more clumped together?). Also, from your recent post count, I think you need to post a bit more regularly, because it looks a bit dead at the moment, and even you posting regularly would help.

I have no comments on the colours, other than that they seem fine enough to me because the contrast is decent.

Maybe also some custom BB code and smilies related to holidays, because out the box might be boring your members a bit now for some reason?

Oh, and to the above poster, there's a massive link saying forums here:

http://www.warmislands.com/

[Doctor Dan]

Originally Posted by cheat-master30

Oh, and to the above poster, there's a massive link saying forums here:

http://www.warmislands.com/

Yes, there's a forums tab at the top of the page, but I was suggesting "breaking out" this paragraph on the portal page

Chat with other members in our cruise forums and tropical travel forums where you can get first hand feedback and experiences from experienced people who have taken a cruise or vacationed on the islands you are planning to enjoy for yourself. There's nothing like real experiences from real people. We are always looking for seasoned travelers that can help new ones with planning their tropical vacation or cruise in our forums. Come register and join in the fun!

with its own title to "advertise" the forum better.

- Dan