Please critique my board

[Hawke]

I have more boards set up to view if perspective members sign up and post. I purposely left the guest view at the default Proboards skin. I have 4 or 5 other skins to choose from that are accessable to members. Beyond that, I dunno. what would you classify my board as? Sci-Fi? General?

hawkesnest.proboards78.com

[Trublu]

Nov 8, 2008 13:52:26 GMT -5 Hawke said:

I have more boards set up to view if perspective members sign up and post. I purposely left the guest view at the default Proboards skin. I have 4 or 5 other skins to choose from that are accessable to members. Beyond that, I dunno. what would you classify my board as? Sci-Fi? General?

hawkesnest.proboards78.com

I agree with Joshua, that you might want to change the default skin a little bit. I think you've at least added some gradients to the guest one, which is good, but you might consider giving guests a taste of what they are going to get inside, which is the point of guest viewing.

You might consider adding a small bit at the end of the rules stating that they were taken from Proboards Support, as that is the nice thing to do when copying something from another site. You might, in there, considering adding a part about the rating of the board (PG-13, as per TOS).

As for the premise, I am confused, as you are. First you start off with a general board, then you switch to science fiction. I would advise you to pick one, and expand on it. There is more to a general board, and more to a science fiction board. I'm curious also as to why you allow guests to view the science fiction part of the board, but not the general part.

[Hawke]

Thanks for all of the info!!

I guess I'm gearing it more towards Sci-Fi fans than anything. As for the default ProBoards scheme, I just wanted the skins to be a nice little treasure when they signed up, and thought putting the default scheme up there would draw people in.

I've been running boards for awhile, but haven't had much of a return in membership. i advertise like crazy, but it doesn't seem to do any good. Right now I have 7 members. I want to start an afilliate program but don't know how.

[nyaccent]

You need to have something else besides the default skin that you have there now. It doesn't have to be fancy dancy, but people like to look at something else besides what proboards default skin is. What you are saying is that you do have other skins and you want them to be a treasure, a find that they will come across when they sign up. But sometimes people won't get that far because they don't know you have other skins and some people judge a book by its cover. If you want extra fancy skins for them to find, that is good...but you need something to lure them to the board to make them want to sign up.

Sometimes advertising on sites doesn't help bring membership. You need to join some boards and become active on them and then people get to know you and visit your site and join.

What do you mean by starting an affiliate program? When I first opened my board... I asked forum owners if they would like to affiliate. As long as the board met my standards... it didn't matter what kind of board it was.... I would exchange banners with them. My board is now a little over 8 months old and only a few members had joined from the affiliates. Many are word of mouth or from my siggy on board that I post on.

[Hawke]

I have added MANY skins to my board and changed the default over to a Final Fantasy theme. Beyond that, what else should i do?

[nyaccent]

It looks really good now! Inviting for new members.