Alchemist-Team - Gaming forum

[Luky]

Hey,

It seems I have been giving feedback the past week on alot of sites, but I never thought of asking for some on my own site!

My site is about games, mainly cheating MMORPG, no games in specific.

I seem to be getting some traffic and I have good spots in search engines, but I have trouble keeping the members at my site! Is it because the members and staff, is it because the advertisements, is it because the look, is it because the content or rules?

Please let me know on what you think, http://www.alchemist-team.net/

By the way, I am always looking for people who wish to place their link on my page and in return I place mine on theirs, no money involved, just a traffic swap and page rank boost.

Thanks, Jay!

Good and bad comments welcome!

[legionofangels]

Well I dunno really, I'll throw you a few comments here.

I like the design and colors used of the layout. I also like the News text with the flashing "!", that's a nice touch. I don't see anything off the charts that I haven't seen on other sites, but it's a decent design.

As for critique further, I don't like the huge folder icons, I think they're gaudy. Entering threads or forums seems to load slowly for some reason. I like the activity, longevity, meters, those are nice. I think the posts "amount" is too small of font, I can barely read it.

I think you're allowing too big of avatars and animated one's everywhere will slow down people with weaker connections or slower pc's, but this is a minor issue.

The worst thing you have going though is the signatures. Using a scroll bar really slows things down on moving up/down the page. I'm one of probably many a type of people that likes to scroll up and down with the mouse roll function and not the scroll bars on the sides of the page. Therefore it slows down as it goes down through everyone's sig imagery. I can understand you wanting to keep uniformity perhaps in post box size, but it's annoying.

[Luky]

Hello, thanks alot for your comments! My members totally love the design, they always comment on how professional it looks

I didnt think the folder icons were a problem, however they are kinda off colour to the rest of the design so i will try find some new ones!

The avatar issue isnt as bad as you think, on another game cheating forum every 10th person has an avatar 500x500 pixels and it looks fugly! :P But i will reduce the limit to 100x100

For the signature thing, I and others tend to hove our mouse away from the signature line, point it under the user info like avatar and stuff while you scroll and its not an issue, the reason i made it scroll is because i cannot stand how my members use images that are a wallpaper size! Take a look at www.gamerzneeds.net (No offence Hornstar) but they all have signatures like 800 pixels long, its really ugly :/

Also i belive the slow loading thing is caused by Clicksor, i only put one popup per session so it wont annoy people but it still loads that little bit and interacts with clicksor before it loads the page, also there is some other un-needed stuff in the scripting i wish to clean up

Thanks again, i will try my best to make my forums more inviting and user friendly!

[legionofangels]

I don't know why you don't restrict pixel size and overall file size of sig imagery then.

I mean place it as a rule and back it up with warnings or bannings until people listen. You as a staff member can also remove people's signatures if you want. Aside from that I would just warn people not to do it, rather than finding ways around it.

[Luky]

Well i like to be soft, i know and my members know there are literally thousands of gaming forums, hundreds probably better then mine... if im going to be harsh and push them around they will just pack and leave! Its happened before, i have asked them though, i reduced from 200x200 to 100x100

See here -> http://www.alchemist-team.net/vb/sho...675/index.html

[aceofspades]

To be honest there is not much to comment on, your just using a premade forum skin several other hundered people are using with very little modification.

On a side note, i think i saw you in a zombiemod css server yesterday, his name was Counter Strike: Sauce.

[Luky]

Nope, i go by the name of Noxter. or Jay

But anyways, i am not prepared to pay lots of money for a custom skin unless my forum has like over 50,000 posts and is active.

[aceofspades]

Fair enough. As far as premade skins go, that is one of my favourites.