Please review Offwalk the off topic forum

[BlueCheri]

Hello Friends,

Kindly review The Offwalk - Off topic forum.

The link is www.offwalk.com

Youtube link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPEVFaKYhrI

Thanx in advance.

G!

[RobbieZ]

I'm using a laptop to review your site.

On initial load the facebook/twitter/RSS icons overlap your navbar.

Usual blue-ish color theme used, nice layout easy on the eye.

Nice to see the use of a notice to explain what your site is and does.

Title is OFFWALK Off Topic forum.

Consistency

Your notice has the word 'Offtopic' all one word in it also at the bottom of your forum. The About OW link now shows two different images which leads to confusion, further into your thread you start using OffWaLK and then change throughout to offwalk, upper and lower case letters, you need to stick to one only.

Imagery BR used is an Anim? character which seems totally out of place.

Forumhome contains a forum title called 'Global Forum' that seems out of place, underneath this you then list 'Cafe` Offwalk!' if this is supposed to french orientated use of the word cafe then use it correctly 'Caf?'.

Contact Us leads to a 'You must accept the Forum Rules below' , after inspecting these you list[*] For breaking above rules you may be warned/banned appropriately! The only use of the asterisk is actually in that sentence.

After clicking accept which is hard to submit because of said Anim? character it then takes you to the registration page, I'm trying to contact you not register.

I think navtab 'Advt' needs to be the word 'Advertise' and what is navtab OW Q-L? the popup menu displayed is inconsistent again with the use of the word offwalk with multiple lower and upper case letters.

Check this posts signature: http://www.offwalk.com/threads/5011-...7379#post47379 nearly 10 months and no one has spotted this being a mess?

Hope you do well

[BlueCheri]

Excellent, and thanx a lot for detailed and micro reviewed.

We will try to fix the suggested changes.

Edit: All most every suggested changes done. Remaining one or two will fix in a day or two.

More Reviews please.

Thanx and rgds,

G!

Originally Posted by RobbieZ

I'm using a laptop to review your site.

On initial load the facebook/twitter/RSS icons overlap your navbar.

Usual blue-ish color theme used, nice layout easy on the eye.

Nice to see the use of a notice to explain what your site is and does.

Title is OFFWALK Off Topic forum.

Consistency

Your notice has the word 'Offtopic' all one word in it also at the bottom of your forum. The About OW link now shows two different images which leads to confusion, further into your thread you start using OffWaLK and then change throughout to offwalk, upper and lower case letters, you need to stick to one only.

Imagery BR used is an Anim? character which seems totally out of place.

Forumhome contains a forum title called 'Global Forum' that seems out of place, underneath this you then list 'Cafe` Offwalk!' if this is supposed to french orientated use of the word cafe then use it correctly 'Caf?'.

Contact Us leads to a 'You must accept the Forum Rules below' , after inspecting these you list[*] For breaking above rules you may be warned/banned appropriately! The only use of the asterisk is actually in that sentence.

After clicking accept which is hard to submit because of said Anim? character it then takes you to the registration page, I'm trying to contact you not register.

I think navtab 'Advt' needs to be the word 'Advertise' and what is navtab OW Q-L? the popup menu displayed is inconsistent again with the use of the word offwalk with multiple lower and upper case letters.

Check this posts signature: http://www.offwalk.com/threads/5011-...7379#post47379 nearly 10 months and no one has spotted this being a mess?

Hope you do well

[Sage Knight]

The forum atm, is looking good in terms of activity.

Like mentioned above, change the anime character with some thing smaller and more appealing, perhaps with Homer Simpson? ;P

I'd also remove the welcome message in the sidebar, you already have one in the notice, [which should also be shortened and formatted better as nobody really likes to reads walls of text] And also remove the Traffic Stats at the bottom, I doubt an average member would really care about your Alexa rank ;3

Why not also add forum icons for each section? And go for the legacy postbit style?

[BlueCheri]

Many thanx friend for your views and comments.

- I also feel it should be small, I will try to get it don.
- The welcome message I think may be useful for search engine point of view (not sure may take expert opinion on this.
- Mostly having Alexa ranking bar is important for the ranking point of view
- I am not good technically, so difficult for me to have forums icons for each section, you are right it will look nice.
- Some settings are with postbit, may not be able to set 'Legacy Postbit' let me try it again.

Rgds,

G!

Originally Posted by Sage Knight

The forum atm, is looking good in terms of activity.

Like mentioned above, change the anime character with some thing smaller and more appealing, perhaps with Homer Simpson? ;P

I'd also remove the welcome message in the sidebar, you already have one in the notice, [which should also be shortened and formatted better as nobody really likes to reads walls of text] And also remove the Traffic Stats at the bottom, I doubt an average member would really care about your Alexa rank ;3

Why not also add forum icons for each section? And go for the legacy postbit style?

[prandah]

looks nice
and simple, i like it.
but have 2 search ? for what ?
why not just 1 column for search and can be change with member

[BlueCheri]

Thanx for your review.

One is search is for forum (posts, threads etc)

Other is affiliated links.

G!

Originally Posted by prandah

looks nice
and simple, i like it.
but have 2 search ? for what ?
why not just 1 column for search and can be change with member

[NOCTURNES]

Hello, I really like the image to the bottom right saying "Hi there, seems like you are not a member yet.." etc I think that is very original, at least I have not seen it anywhere else.

Now what I dont like personally is the background colors. Maybe customize the back ground so that its not gray? The whole page is too gray for my taste.

[BlueCheri]

Many thanx for your views and comments.

G!

Originally Posted by NOCTURNES

Hello, I really like the image to the bottom right saying "Hi there, seems like you are not a member yet.." etc I think that is very original, at least I have not seen it anywhere else.

Now what I dont like personally is the background colors. Maybe customize the back ground so that its not gray? The whole page is too gray for my taste.

[Max Taxable]

107 requests, 11.493 seconds load time on the Patrick Meehan Google web page test:

http://www.webpagetest.org/result/120216_YN_38REP/

Two 500 errors and a 403 as well.

For reference, native vBulletin loads much faster and has only 55 or so requests, with no errors.. At the Meehan site there's many tips and tricks on how to improve, and you can run the test yourself as many times as you want, from different locations and also different browsers.

For mobile devices, this page is a disaster. Over 9 seconds load time and over 900kb of data. I think you want to find a slick, slithery mobile style and get automatic mobile style assignment enabled, or get vBulletin's mobile suite. Here's the test results on a i-Phone out of Ottawa:

http://www.blaze.io/mobile/result/?t...0E_A4W&src=wpt

In the screengrab below you can see that on my Firefox 10 browser, there's some add-on image conflicts in your navbar and in some other places:



Here's the complete waterfall view of your page on the web from Meehan:

http://www.webpagetest.org/result/12...REP/1/details/

General Impressions:
The color scheme and the header logo look nice. It's generally a nice impression, but the chatbox and all the text at the top make it look a bit chaotic and muddy. I concur with others, the sidebar needs attention. I would get rid of the top two elements completely, and move the third one below the fold, opting instead for latest posts and latest threads as the top elements in the sidebar.

Overall, nice board.

--------------- Added [DATE]1329411935[/DATE] at [TIME]1329411935[/TIME] ---------------

Originally Posted by Sage Knight

Like mentioned above, change the anime character with some thing smaller and more appealing, perhaps with Homer Simpson? ;P

Mine is Beavis and Butthead!