I guess I'll throw my hat in the ring

Hey,

Hopefully I can get some feedback from you guys. I have big expectations for the site and I'm hoping I'm doing enough new things to generate interest. Its a political website but with a bit of a different twist because I am intentionally bringing in people with opposing opinions and having debates among ourselves without other interaction. I have a guy who will start writing "against me" in mid November and until then I'm finding ways to put up my own content. There are some quizzes and of course the forums. I have one fairly experienced Mod (kind of a co-admin really, she just hasn't accepted the title yet) and then me, the complete noob. I tried once before and both of my members thought I did real well. Anyways, without further adieu https://www.delegatedsovereignty.com All things politics.

Thanks to anyone who take the time to feeback and review or even just stop by.

Mike

 

I try to access your site and I received an SSL error:

Might want to fix that.

 

Site works if you take the s out after http.

 

oops. Yeah, I have been playing with the facebook app so much I put the wrong address. Should be http://www.delegatedsovereignty.com.

Mike

 

Welcome to the forums Mike.

A few suggestions from me would be..

• make your guest message in your notice a big image, take advantage of the space.
• add some more text for your category section, use up 200-300 characters if you can.
• make better use of your cms home page, I'm a big fan of eye catching images to get ppl to register/login
• I like the logo and the style, the screws are cool!
• charge your favircon
• keep working on content, make sure all sections have at least one post in them if you wish to keep all the sections right now

• --that's all for now

Enjoy our site

 

I was going to look over this site over the weekend, but then we got hit with a freak snowstorm. Anyway! Had some time at work today to look it over and here are some suggestions/comments:

I like the colors; they’re not too bright or blinding like some other sites I’ve visited previously and like the logo you have. The portal gives me a lot of information about what’s going on within the forum itself, which is nice; however, it may also give too much information. As you scroll down, you still have information on the right, but nothing on the left or in the center. I would suggest removing a couple of the widgets you have on the portal. Since it looks like you have articles in the center of the page already, you may want to consider removing “Recent Articles” and “Article Comments” because people can see them right there, prominent in the center of the page. What you could do is replace the “Recent Articles” widget with the “Resent Blog Posts” and when you remove those two widgets, the “Recent Forum Posts” one would move up, so instead of having to click three times you’d only have to click—essentially—once to get to the bottom of the page. I do like the section widget, which let me click to each item quickly and get information I may have been looking for.

I think your blogs are very informative as are the articles. I read through quite a few of them and learned some things I hadn’t known previously. The vBQuiz is pretty interesting as well; I had not seen that on any other site previously. I think it’s a fun way for your members to find out how much they actually know on the quick subjects. I think your rules read a little choppy and seem a bit repetitive at times, but they certainly get the points across. I like that every member that joins is greeted, which is something I think all forums should do (to make members feel welcomed), but not all forums do. Everything was very easy to navigate; it looked for something and found it right off.

 

Thank you for your feedback guys. I redid the widgets as you said. It is funny you mentioned it because I always thought it was awkward. I cut down the number of posts each one references (5 down to 3) and eliminated the article and comments on the posts. I'm going to go in and reformat the front page a little bit more this weekend because there are definitely some improvements we can make. I am also working on the favicon. I have a friend who is making me a different icon and a colorful banner for the top. Thanks again for the critique. I will post back later this weekend because I have a few ideas.

Mike

 

What happened to the site ?

 

confirmed, it's gone

 

I've seen so many forums that just "disappear" owners should just wait it out. I assume they close them down because it doesn't take off, from what I hear it can take awhile for that to happen but eventually it will.

 

It rarely "happens over night" but I have seen it go that way before.
Hopefully the OP was just having hosting issues and the forum will be up and running in no time.

 

Aye, I've only used one host... Then again I haven't been hosting a forum for long, don't see a reason why you should really need to switch unless you have down time but I think most hosting companies offer the same.