My Community - Index

Hi fellas i have started a site/forum for mature gamers.

Please give me feedback on possible improvements and so on cheers...

Hi there,
I think your site looks quite all right!!!
The only thing I personally do not like so much is the black background. I always find it easier to read on white/ light colored background. Not so straining on the eyes!
But nice set up, clean looking, easy to navigate.
Maybe you would like to have a look at mine ( I will post it for review though, too) My Beach Decor

Cheers!Petra

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Affiliate Marketing SOS
Petra's Internet Marketing Blog

Cheers for the feedback m8,

I understand what you are saying but i feel the black background gives a gamey type feel if you see what i mean...

As a mature gamer I like the site. The artwork at the top was well done and fits the theme of your site. The XBox green on the black also went fairly well. My overall experience when visiting your site was good, except you do have a few downfalls, at least things I would call downfalls.

* First and foremost, nobody wants to join a forum of any type that is not being used. I have seen forums on various topics, excellently laid out, disappear because they were unable to attract new members. I have also seen people go to extreme to make their forums look like they had a few members and it was being used. They did this by creating multiple logins and basically talking and arguing with themselves until new members joined and joined into the conversation. Now I'm not saying that this is what you should do..I am saying this is going to be your biggest hurdle. I do see you have a few members which is great. There should be some activity in every thread at least every other day. You need to make your forum look active. Even if you have 1000 members, if nobody is using the forums, then nobody is going to use them.

* Another thing you may want to think about is most people start sites, forums and blogs with the intent that they are going to keep it going, maintaining it, getting it to where they want it to be. Many of these sites disappear due to the enthusiasm goes away or they did not realize how much work was involved or they just run out of time. I did notice your site did not use any type of money making advertisement, including Google ads, banners or affiliates. This tells me right off that this site is not just a burden on your time, but also a burden financially. Now I'm not saying make your site into a billboard...that would be bad. What I am suggesting is joining an affiliate program, such as Share-a-Sale, and put a small rotating banner next to your login area in that black empty space. This will hopefully, if nothing else, have the site support itself. If the site makes you $5 a month, thats $5 more than what you had and you are less likely to give up on it.

* I myself being a mature gamer, I believe you forgot several topics that you may want to add.
a. A topic for online pc games like Realm, Runescape, Maple Story, WOW, etc.
b. A topic for private servers, for people who are running them to list them.
c. A topic for people making custom sig files.
d. A topic for online, first person shooters, for games like Quake, Unreal, Halo, etc.
e. A topic for programmers who create custom maps or custom plug-ins.
f. Cheat section for people to ask about and talk about cheat codes.
g. Private server / set up and networking issues, operating system to use "tech help".

By looking at your forums, you do appear to be mostly geared toward consoles. I think you forgot about a very big part of adult gaming, which is your online pc games. In looking at your consoles section in general, this is a topic I feel you forgot, but it is a topic that would be strictly up to you if you add it as it is somewhat frowned upon by some, but talked about by many. This would be the thread on modification of the consoles, repair pieces and parts for the consoles, what version of board works with what version of mod, what software is best used for making legal backups, etc. This would be totally your call if you wanted to add it and I am only bringing it up in case you did not think about it.


This is a little off topic, but is a true story.

I myself have 3 kids and we have, like many, a home network set up. Part of our past time / fun time is we get on and play Quake across our LAN. You have to be real careful if you set up a network like this and you play shoot-em up games like this because I got called to my boys school because my boy made the comment 'I cannot wait to get home so I can blow my dad's head off'. It took me the longest of time to convince them that he was talking about Quake and this is our past time...killing each other!
The above sounds funny now, trust me it wasn't at the time. It happened right around the time of 9/11 with the echoes of Columbine still in people's minds.

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The Sensual Touch Lingerie | High Heels | High Heel Blog

Cheers some food for thought there. I will implament a few of those i think and get you to take another look...

I actually really like the layout and the background. I think it goes great with the overall theme of your forum. I think you can tell you spent alot of time on your forum by look at it and if I was a gamer I would join. Great job
Maemae

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The Graphics Shoppe~2000+ Commercial Use Graphics!
http://thegraphicsshoppeclub.com

Thanyou.

Can someone advise me on my searchabilty as well?

Please

Forture2000

Was that a review or a plug for your own biz?

I think it was a plug as ever post you made so far has been the same....
Not a good call on your part.

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The Sensual Touch Lingerie | High Heels | High Heel Blog

Yea I agree, there are those who love to plug his stick in any possible hole he found even if they are dirty. About your site, I think I will rate it 4/10 since nothing special on it. You should add some Animated button to make it looks alive.

Bahahaha, keep sticking your stick in the hole.

This is about maturevideogamer.co.uk nothing else........

I like the header graphic and the background a lot. Can I hire you to design my site?

That said, you're brave to use copyrighted images.

The forum graphics are a free downloadable theme but the banner is mine.

As for doing any work mate i am very busy with me 3 sites but if you need some help i can probably help you out...

Design wise it looks very nice, congratulations.

From an seo perspective you might want to think about a plugin for the forum urls as at the moment all the links append a session id to the query string. Going forward this will cause you indexing and duplicate content problems.

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Girlz Night - professional hair and beauty products
Web design glasgow - from Thin Denim

Further to my post above I did a bit of searching and it sounds like there may be an option in your admin for search engine friendly urls? If so, then I would recommend turning this on asap.

There also seems to be an seo plugin SEO4SMF, however, it doesn't appear to be compatible with version 1.1.4.

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Girlz Night - professional hair and beauty products
Web design glasgow - from Thin Denim

cheers fella i have added the pretty urls mod

for me the design is nice.
the black color background looks cool for game site

Cheers peeps