Outdoor-Fishing.com

Honk the horn, beat the drum, Outdoor-Fishing.com is almost here!!

First off, I would like to give our famous member, MordyT, a round of appluase. He has been on top of the ball, he installed the forum at no cost, very friendly, and overall an outstanding person to work with! He deserves much of the credit, and without him I really can't say what the site would have looked like.

The forum is in its final stage and almost ready to officially launch. There are still a few things that are being worked on, so the official date is not set.

Since I thought that AA was a cool forum, and there are some fabulous people here, then I do believe that you guys and gals should be the first to review it! So how about it? Are all of you up for the challenge?

I am looking for a simple review. Nothing big. I don't need essays, but if you want to go above and beyond, then I would be more than happy to read yours.

My questions to you:
1) After you click on my website link, what is the first thought that comes to mind? Is it
2) After surfing the site, what do you like or dislike about it? What kinds of things stand out? (I want all honest opinon here. All the little things count.)
3) If you were the owner my forum, what would you change and why?
4) Finally, how easy is it to navigate this forum?


I would also prefer that some of you register and just browse through the member features. It will help me more if you could see you it through a perspective of a regular member on my site.

I believe that pretty much wraps it up, and please have fun reviewing my site!!

Link to site: Outdoor-Fishing.com

 

My questions to you:
1) After you click on my website link, what is the first thought that comes to mind? Is it
At lot of blank space at the top and two big ads. I don't see much content. Basic banner, but its cool.

2) After surfing the site, what do you like or dislike about it? What kinds of things stand out? (I want all honest opinon here. All the little things count.)
I am not a fan of SMF (I am biased). Colors don't scream fishing to me. Way too many sections. Condense it by A LOT. Top has a lot of empty space.

3) If you were the owner my forum, what would you change and why?
Put an ad in the empty space at the top and remove the two others. Actually, remove them all and remove that big space. It's a new forum. Incorporate google ads if you want ads. I would do more nature like colors.

4) Finally, how easy is it to navigate this forum?
Very easy

 

1) You must log in to see what this space is really for. I believe you are referring to the header and this can be changed by clicking the little arrow up in the top right corner.

2) I will consider. There are a few topics about the niche itself. I have the classifieds which makes the forum look large.

3) Ads will stay, because I do not want to add huge ads later on. I want people to get used to the fact that there are ads... I have seen this on another forum, and it works well (yes they started with large ads).

4) Awesome! That was one of my main concerns.

Thanks for your honest review!!

 

First impressions:
The amber bar across the top stands out too much, and to me, sends the wrong message. "Please Login or Register" implies causal visitors are discouraged, so I would probably just leave.

I'm not sure I like the big graphic, there is a button there that appears to hide a search window. I'm not sure what that is about. My screen height is 1440 high and I'm not sure I'm even looking at a front page or some forums until I go down the page a bit.

The first thing that really peaked my interest was the row of buttons across the top: 'home' and 'forum' next to each other was my first indication that the forum was worth checking out more. CMS? Portal? At least I wanted to look farther down the page.

Under those buttons it is quite nice. Not too cluttered like many sites that use vb add ons where it is tough to find the 'forums' button. I think the amount of 'stuff' on that page is just right. Any more or less and you may turn off the casual people that want to look inside.

Going inside: I like the bobbers for the graphics. Nice touch.
WAY too many forums, by at least 3x. I don't see a great need to have an "offshore freshwater fishing" forum, although in the great lakes that could be applicable.

I'm not sure why you would want site news and site announcements, then later you may want a feedback forum. Maybe make a simple forum called "OF Site Specific"? Then that would handle pretty much everything for a while, possibly forever.

I really like the width of the forum and the colors, especially because blue = water.


Sorry about not answering your questions in order, I'd say except for having too many forums your site is incredibly easy to navigate. You've got the hard part done.

I like the site! You just need a few members to start posting : )

I'm sorry if I was too harsh, but those were my honest thoughts.

EDIT - I just read the previous post. If that is a google ad that I'm not seeing because of my ad blocker you may want to put up your own ad that might be of interest to the forum, served up from your own server so the ad blocker would not block that. If the ad is of interest to the forum members, they don't mind looking at them. "Joes tackle shop" is always looking for free advertising, well at first it might be free.

 

I was messing around with the ads, so that's probably why you didn't see it. I will find Joes tackle shop, I'm giving out ads super cheap right now, and possibly even free. I do not believe in google ads (none on my site).

 

I would make the color of the bar and text far more subtle, the bar the same width as the the header graphic.

Maybe?
"Thank you very much for visiting, please consider joining our forum for an even more enjoyable experience.

Something acknowledging that they are important. Other people could probably come up with better wording than I.

If it were my forum I would not put up anything because it already has a "please log in" message.

I would think you can control those types of things, space on someones computer screen is a valuable commodity.

Obviously your call, if it were me I'd have 4x less of them, it will confuse and overwhelm people that might want to join the site. It's pretty easy to split out content/forums once you get enough members posting.

Ok, if you are feeding the front page with specific posts, you have a reason to have 2 site specific forums, I really don't see a need for more than 2 if they are labeled correctly (that is the hard part for sure).

No. way to much to do these days. :p

No google ads, your forum will be successful! :yes:

Yes you should be selling ad space cheap at this point. Maybe some free bait or lures. You may want to consider finding people in 'real life' from Joes to join, maybe put up a flyer on their bulletin board. Talk to the customers. There seem to be 'forum people', and not 'forum people', the non-forum people are a pretty good bunch overall. You can find those at Joes.

 

I'm not sure if you know this or not, but I believe that this bar is supposed to look like one of those "install activex" drop down bars. They are very noticable, and they ussually have some sort of icon before the sentence starts. I like the way it attracts the viewers attention right away. Maybe I should do a poll and see if people like it as much as I do? I do agree that it would probably not be bad idea to rephrase that sentence.

I very much liked a forum, so I decided to create much of the same as possible. Here is the link, and maybe it will help clear up a lot of things...
crackroll.com

Again, it falls into the same answer as above. I think it all depends on how much you advertise. If you go big and manage to get 5k members in a year, then I do not see an issue with many forums. It takes a while to figure out how things work, but it also kept me a member for a long time...

Yes, you are correct. I might need to re-label this category to help confuse less people.

Tell me about it...:nailbite:

Yes, I hope so. One of my main ideas on getting the word out would be word-of-the-mouth advertising, or handing out flyers.

 

I understood what you were trying to do with the amber bar across the top of the screen.

I checked out the site you mentioned, that looks a bit cleaner than your forum. The amber bar changes color when a mouse is over it, and the wording is a bit better on that forum for the bar.

In addition that is a vb forum and as such has many more forums per inch on my screen so I do not have to scroll down so far. But it still has a lot of forums that could be subforums so they do not take so much space on the screen.


Your forum is your blank canvas to do with as you see fit. To shape and mold how you think it should be. That is the great thing about starting a forum. The look & feel, how it operates is completely up to you : )

Take the input, use the parts that you like, and not the other parts.

A few things make me think your forum will be successful

• You are searching for forums beyond your forums focus, as evidenced by the site you mentioned.
• You want real people as opposed to an online campaign, which is more difficult short term, but easier long term (for me).
• You do not like google ads, and would prefer ads from real sources. You have a niche site compared to a general talk site, those ads will be worth much more than what google will pay.

 

Yes, it looks much better.

I was originally planning to go with VB. Unfortunately, they do not offer 3.8x anymore... I believe that Crackroll still has 3.8x, and I really dislike the VB 4.0 version. I'm considering going with IPB, but that is still undecided...

I try and look up to those who are very successful. It gives me a good start, and to gain that success will be based on what choices I make later on.

Thank you for your thoughts/ideas.

Outdoor-Fishing

 

vb3.8 works really well. It might be tempting to pick up a copy for your forum, but keep in mind that DOS 3.1 worked really well too, and if the same older hardware was available would still work well.

It is a huge amount of work to change software, if you are happy with smf I'd stick with it. Or IPB if that is the direction you want to go. Currently we are renting IPBs smallest 'hosted community' with all the add ons they sell for $18/m for evaluation purposes. That also comes with ticket & phone support, and full access to all forums at ipb.com.

Simply typing 'forums' into google/bing/yahoo will yield many strange and interesting results. I have found ideas of how to set things up on some bizarre forums. ; )

 

Thanks for the tip!

Outdoor-Fishing