Re Review of my site (DS Ultimate)

[gamerfu]

There are a lot of styles. I personally like all the choices!

The first impression I always try to snapshot in my mind then play with the board a bit. The moods project is a nice addition you have going on.

The status icons are not consistant. I feel the forums are unorganized at first then as I looked around it was organized. The status icons with real and animation status icons makes the first impression of the board be unorganized.

There are a ton of categories which are nice and I do not see any categories being dead. Least they are active. The only boards that jumped out at me where the:

PS3 board status icon makes it look like it does not belong in your forum. Maybe a animated picture or something. It sticks out and detracts the focus of your board. I kept looking at the PS3 board even though it's a DS (Wifi,DS, Nintendo website?). The focus of the board was thrown off after I saw the PS3 icon, sorry.

Super Mario Galaxy board didn't make any sense as to why it has its own categorey. I think you wanted to say you want to talk about this game, but under General Discussion didn't make as much sense as having it under a Nintendo categorey.

"Other Major Series" and "Nintendo DS minor games", could these two board be put together to make "Other DS Games"? But, that won't make sense witht he categorey called "Other DS Games". I am familiar with major and minor releases being code or upgrades as in programming terms. But, most gamers do not understand this lingo either, maybe Popular Series and One-Hit Wonders are more gamerish. I do not want to knock the wording choice, but you get what I mean. It's a bit confusing from a gamer/programmer perspective. :erm:

The last one is the category "Other DS Games". Where is the DS Games categorey? Is it the "Wifi Games" category??? But, I see SSBB in there??? That isn't a DS game. The title of the category is misleading. I am looking around for Wii Games Category, but those are in the "Wifi Games" and in the General Discussion categories???

The wiki, Galleries, Arcade are nice features. They are most useful features, but feel a-bit too much when I saw the Glossary. I do not know persoanally if gamers need a Glossary. But, it's a nice idea.

I do like the deep blue with the Rainbow Star colors form Mario Kart 64. It's a nice touch! Some popular Nintendo character are nice to see.

I cannot really comment on the management, but all the user colors threw me off on how important everyone is. I am glad there is a legend to tell me who is important and who is not. But, the colors lead to more questions on who do I contact and are they goingot help me answer any of my qustion when i have them.

As an overall results the board looks great. I had to look around quite a bit to come up with those comments. It wasn't easy to mention, but hopefully it helps. I look forward in reviewing your community again in the future.

Oh... I just realized that wasn't a PS3 board... ugh! Anyways, now that I look more closely tot he picture, there is an XBOX. Oh, wow! Okay, this is confusing... "Older Consoles and Games" & "Other Consoles and Games". Both titles are misleading. I first thought Older consoles were Atari, Com64, Vision Series, NES, etc. then I read the discription. Not many users read distcriptions. I have found that out with my own boards. The "Older Consoles and Games" should be "Older Nintendo Consoles and Games" then that would help, then reading those paragraphs of explainations.

Good luck with the community.

[UPDATE]: I just found the Wii board... :erm: I will keep my first impressions posted, so you can read them. I am a bit confused and lost in your boards. I have seem to have a difficult time trying to navigate though the boards correctly without knowing the focus. I thought your boards were about the Nintendo DS. But, I am confused with web URL and changing fo focus. I feel the boards are not properly categorized. Sorry, maybe I cannot properly review your board. I have to many questions and memory problems with your boards.

[cheat-master30]

Originally Posted by gamerfu

There are a lot of styles. I personally like all the choices!

Thank you, I like the styles as well.

The first impression I always try to snapshot in my mind then play with the board a bit. The moods project is a nice addition you have going on.

And the moods were created by the members, so you can thank them for that.

The status icons are not consistant. I feel the forums are unorganized at first then as I looked around it was organized. The status icons with real and animation status icons makes the first impression of the board be unorganized.

I know. I have a category icon designer creating new ones in this style:



But he's got a slight mental block at the moment, and the others are placeholders from about 3 different designers who had different styles. I basically had a vote and the new designer won, so they non decent ones will be replaced shortly, or when he gets round to it.

There are a ton of categories which are nice and I do not see any categories being dead. Least they are active. The only boards that jumped out at me where the:

I have archived any inactive ones, that's why none seem inactive.

PS3 board status icon makes it look like it does not belong in your forum. Maybe a animated picture or something. It sticks out and detracts the focus of your board. I kept looking at the PS3 board even though it's a DS (Wifi,DS, Nintendo website?). The focus of the board was thrown off after I saw the PS3 icon, sorry.

See the point about the category icons being under redesign, that needs a new image which it doesn't have yet, and is a placeholder. It will be changed, as I understand what the problem is here.

Super Mario Galaxy board didn't make any sense as to why it has its own categorey. I think you wanted to say you want to talk about this game, but under General Discussion didn't make as much sense as having it under a Nintendo categorey.

True, I'm considering putting it as a Mario sub category, but it was created because there were a lot of Mario Galaxy discussions in the Mario board and because I was creating a Mario Galaxy section on the main site (dsultimate.net without the actual forum).

"Other Major Series" and "Nintendo DS minor games", could these two board be put together to make "Other DS Games"? But, that won't make sense witht he categorey called "Other DS Games". I am familiar with major and minor releases being code or upgrades as in programming terms. But, most gamers do not understand this lingo either, maybe Popular Series and One-Hit Wonders are more gamerish. I do not want to knock the wording choice, but you get what I mean. It's a bit confusing from a gamer/programmer perspective. :erm:

True, good point I haven't considered, and I will think about that.

The last one is the category "Other DS Games". Where is the DS Games categorey? Is it the "Wifi Games" category??? But, I see SSBB in there??? That isn't a DS game. The title of the category is misleading. I am looking around for Wii Games Category, but those are in the "Wifi Games" and in the General Discussion categories???

I'll change Other DS games to DS Games, and Wifi returns to Nintendo Wifi Connection which is both for DS and Wii games (as you can see here http://www.nintendowifi.com/global/AboutWiFi_Wii.jsp, Nintendo refers to Wii online as Wifi Connection as well). Hope that helps explain.

The wiki, Galleries, Arcade are nice features. They are most useful features, but feel a-bit too much when I saw the Glossary. I do not know persoanally if gamers need a Glossary. But, it's a nice idea.

Thank you. And yes, I guess I should probably add a page or link saying 'Other Features' or something, because it's not so major. Ignore the All Albums as well, that link somehow got auto added by a modification.

I do like the deep blue with the Rainbow Star colors form Mario Kart 64. It's a nice touch! Some popular Nintendo character are nice to see.

Thank you, or thank NintenDan for that, he designed the banner and button images.

I cannot really comment on the management, but all the user colors threw me off on how important everyone is. I am glad there is a legend to tell me who is important and who is not. But, the colors lead to more questions on who do I contact and are they goingot help me answer any of my qustion when i have them.

Can you explain a bit more about this? And yes, the usergroups are confusing, but they all have their own ranking systems and various images and what not. On the bright news, I also removed one of these groups recently, the concierge group since it was being abused.

As an overall results the board looks great. I had to look around quite a bit to come up with those comments. It wasn't easy to mention, but hopefully it helps. I look forward in reviewing your community again in the future.

Thanks for your comments, they are just the kind of comments I was after in a review. You've said just what to improve, gave points people haven't gave before and were honest, which is why I am thankful for the comments.

Oh... I just realized that wasn't a PS3 board... ugh! Anyways, now that I look more closely tot he picture, there is an XBOX. Oh, wow! Okay, this is confusing... "Older Consoles and Games" & "Other Consoles and Games". Both titles are misleading. I first thought Older consoles were Atari, Com64, Vision Series, NES, etc. then I read the discription. Not many users read distcriptions. I have found that out with my own boards. The "Older Consoles and Games" should be "Older Nintendo Consoles and Games" then that would help, then reading those paragraphs of explainations.

Good luck with the community.

Any suggestions for what to rename the boards to?

[UPDATE]: I just found the Wii board... :erm: I will keep my first impressions posted, so you can read them. I am a bit confused and lost in your boards. I have seem to have a difficult time trying to navigate though the boards correctly without knowing the focus. I thought your boards were about the Nintendo DS. But, I am confused with web URL and changing fo focus. I feel the boards are not properly categorized. Sorry, maybe I cannot properly review your board. I have to many questions and memory problems with your boards.

Don't worry, it can be kind of confusing, and I'm always keen to cut down on the number of forums (and yet I constantly get boards suggested by members, and you can tell just why I've not been adding them recently from your confusion).

[cheat-master30]

Bump since I've had many of the category icons changed and forums rearranged.

[cheat-master30]

Bump for reviews.

[cono1717]

Since I am on my Iphone this is have to be short and simple...sorry, hate typing on this thing.

Ok your important announcements repeat themselves which seems like a waste of space. I like the forum design with the custom characters and the skin is bright and attractive for younger members. You do however seem to have a lot of member groups, a idea would be to add the things like legend of zelda as a rank so for example a member could become "Legend...like zelda" (or something like that) after 100 posts, as a admin of a few forums myself I would limit your members to smaller images and text sizes in their signature, after all, trying to load all those images and text in one huge thread filled with 100 posts can have a big impact on bandwidth. Reduce them to about 150 characters is a good amount

Just my input,

Connor

[cheat-master30]

I know we need to reduce signature size. We've been recently bringing in rules for that, but it's currently mainly on the honour system as far as major limits go (it's generally meant to be less than 5 images per signature according to forum rules).

What do you mean by Important Announcements repeating? That's probably not intentional, and I'll need to fix it.

Thanks for your positive comments on the forum style and custom Nintendo images, that's thanks to the DS Ultimate image designers, who are pretty much volunteers.

[EWGF]

Nothing much to add then already said. The double announcements and the biiiiiig signatures need to be fixed, the rest is good IMO.

[cheat-master30]

Any comments on the alternative styles? Preferrably the Evil Dark, Castle Bleck, Halloween, Goomba Smackdown, Dragorium15, Green Legend, Quambo's, Clean Red and Dimension D styles. Yeah, I know there's a lot of styles, and there's also a few parody styles of the current banner:

http://dsultimate.net/Board/upload/i...ESUltimate.png

http://dsultimate.net/Board/upload/i...64Ultimate.png

P.S. If you don't understand the naming, some styles were made by various members, and a few of the styles are based on Super Paper Mario.

Oh, and I've fixed the duplicate notice issue. Just needed to revert the FORUMHOME template.

[Loget]

It looks very cluttered