Final Fantasy Unlimited(a role play forum)

[janneke]

<a href="http://forum.finalfantasyunlimited.net" target="_blank">http://forum.finalfantasyunlimited.net</a>

The forum is has recently been changed to a vbulletin one, with a skin and header made for us (I know it's the wrong text lol) an now I am looking for advice on what to do to make the forum more active and such.
This is what the forum is all about:

It's a text written role play forum about the final fantasy series. And as soon as I have the cash whe are planning on buying the Inferno RPG mod. The forum has many members and is for a role play fairly active. Whe have an experience systm including the shop and cash mod.

Please tell me what can be better.

Thanks in advance.

[legionofangels]

I used to critique forums on another website, and I've always thought of myself as brutally honest. I feel like not replying to be nice, but I think being honest might help you so here goes.

As far as traffic this is what I would do:

---- find link partners, where you can link to there sites, and them to you, FF sites

---- add yourself to directories, link directories of course. As well as standard Yahoo, Google, Live, and other major search engines.

---- vbSEO or Zoints, for optimizing your SEO. I recommend saving up money for VBSEO myself.

---- EFFORT! Post, and post, and post over the first year or two without any expectation that your site will even make it. Then if it does, you'll be like...ok it was worth the effort, and if not, you have no reason to feel bad since you tried your best.

==========================================

As far as the design though, wow. I would scrap it completely honestly.

The New Post, NO New Post icons are too small for the images you put there and are using. You can make out the difference as one is red and the other blue, but you can't even see what they are while squinting.

Your ad's aren't aligned with the rest of the forum, looks sloppy.

Banner is the best thing about it, and it's not that great. Transparent text is pretty easy, I would have tried for something more grunge styled maybe, or just something else or the same thing and smaller text in a corner.

The post buttons don't match the layout at all.

The cat headers don't match the buttons or the nav bar.

The nav bar matches nothing mainly. I mean, why doesn't the nav bar match the cats, or come close? They are two totally different tones, one is sea green, the other is like aquamarine.

The bg is probably the worst. Has nothing to do with FF. I've played every FF game and own near all of them, and it just dun match.

I would do a major graphics overhaul. Get more color coordinated, stick with 1 to 3 colors total, or 1 to 3 tones. Like Red, white, Dark Red, for example. Keep it simple and it will look a lot more professional.

Lastly I cannot even remember what the images are called, even though I recolored them a year ago. navbits_start.gif, its the vb standard. So over all you're layout is a combination of bad colors that don't work together with vb standard images and colors in parts you decided not to change.

I'm not perfect, don't take this as a personal insult please. But redo the graphics and color scheme. You'll be much happier with your own site and your visitors will be content satisfied with effort you put forth and visually satisfied with a more professional layout.

Hope this was useful,

L E G I O N

[janneke]

Honesty is always welcome, why else would I ask for a review? i don't like it when people say "ow what a great site"while in fac they get sick looking at it. I'll see what I can do.