The Symbian Forum

[qqqqw]

Plz review my forum

www.thesymbianforum.com

[magnus]

What you need is something to allow/remind users to register..

[qqqqw]

Am having this
Inactive Reminders By Mished.co.uk

[magnus]

I was being sarcastic.


Nothing drives me away from a site faster than the smell of desperation. Upon loading your site, I am immediately assaulted with *3* requests to register.

The first, an incredibly annoying bar at the top that stalks me (yes, I know it can be closed) followed up with what appears to be an out of place "click here to register" table, right above a quick register form (which, btw, is not collapsable) that takes up a large portion of the entire page.

If I'm brave (or masochistic) enough to continue on downward, immediately following there is yet another reminder that I am unregistered.

That's 4 registration requests before I'm even halfway down the page!!

Then, to top the whole thing off.. all of the forums are private! So, my reward for bravely trekking through the registration assault is to be greeted with forums I can't even look at to see if the community is something I even want to be a part of!

Just my take on the matter. Do what you will.

/me vote for magnus here... (it worth it!)

[cheat-master30]

Originally Posted by qqqqw

Plz review my forum

www.thesymbianforum.com

Okay, although a link would have been nicer and a little easier for the raters to reach the forum, it's nothing I consider a major problem by far. With the actual forum though, I do think the form at the top for quick registration really is overkill, and in all forums I have seen with this form, pushes the actual important content down the page and also looks pretty ugly (I am not a fan of whatever modification seems to add that).

As for reminders, I personally don't mind the reminders much, the moving one being minorly annoying and the others being something possibly helpful and conveniant. However, I don't like it when content is hidden to guests, which only really can be useful for a private forum which is fully private from guests, and public forums should ideally have the content open to guests (I am the kind which is turned away by even not being able to view links and images as guests, seeing as the replacement text is often extremely disruptive to your reading of topic content). But yes, you should probably open the private forums to guest viewing, as when it's like this or 'Guests must log in' for a public forum it seems very much like desperation in trying to forcibly gain members.

Smilies seem quite good, just not very consistent in style (going from multi coloured to yellow to various weird shapes).

BB code is pretty cool, although I warn against allowing members to embed flash content because of security risks, and limiting them to content from certain sites is generally more secure.

Style looks nice enough overall.

However, I do really not approve of one thing:

1- The huge list of stats at the bottom, which may actually be the downfall of the forum (if you want explanation, ask).

Apart from that, nice enough forum, well done.

Originally Posted by magnus

I was being sarcastic.


Nothing drives me away from a site faster than the smell of desperation. Upon loading your site, I am immediately assaulted with *3* requests to register.

The first, an incredibly annoying bar at the top that stalks me (yes, I know it can be closed) followed up with what appears to be an out of place "click here to register" table, right above a quick register form (which, btw, is not collapsable) that takes up a large portion of the entire page.

If I'm brave (or masochistic) enough to continue on downward, immediately following there is yet another reminder that I am unregistered.

That's 4 registration requests before I'm even halfway down the page!!

Then, to top the whole thing off.. all of the forums are private! So, my reward for bravely trekking through the registration assault is to be greeted with forums I can't even look at to see if the community is something I even want to be a part of!

Just my take on the matter. Do what you will.

Does anyone else consider private forums, limited topic viewing and guests having to log in for a non private matter forum like begging for members?

[qqqqw]

Now topics are open for Guests ! thnx 4 the review