Board Name: 1337Games
Board URL: www.1337games.tk or http://1337games.ipbfree.com/
Board Description: A gaming site for people to talk about anything relating to gaming. My second attempt at a site, and was recently re-tooled so guests wouldn't be staring at 30 boards on the index.

link does not provide access to your board

1337games.ipbfree.com

thanks. I edited it into the first post for you.

Thanks.

When should I expect the review to be posted?

Board evaluation requests are put in a staff queue and are usually done within a couple of days if not sooner. You may also receive additional evaluations from other BB members, however you will always receive at least one staff review.

Aight, thank you.

Well, lucky you, kyledude! You get me for your evaluation. :D

Strengths

• Skin selector lets user personalize their experience on your site. The board width changer option is a nice feature.
• Good assortments of mods: shoutbox, arcade, store, army system, lottery.
• Well defined theme, there is no doubt that you are a gaming discussion forum, even though you miss the opportunity to reinforce that with graphic choices.
• Great idea to have current games and retro games sections to appeal to more users.
• You appear to have a loyal committed staff and some members who post on a regular basis.

Weaknesses

• Although you have a respectable number of posts, the cutoff dates are making your forums look inactive.
• There is no welcome information readily visible.
• There appear to be no current or past board competitions, which seems odd for a gaming board.
• Content of many topics is basically spammy and not interesting to read.
• Although gaming talk is the purpose of your board, it is not featured enough.
• The biggest weakness I see is that you have not developed a board personality, neither graphically, nor through your forum names and descriptions.

Recommendations

• Suggest including a game-themed skin in your skin selector and make it the default for your board.
• Have some welcoming message for guests, and a topic that gives them information about your board that might entice them to join. Perhaps even make a welcome guests forum for them.
• Remove cut-off dates in forums so that all posted topics are visible, especially in forums that would be empty if you didn't do that.
• Start some high scores competitions, or game-based competitions for members to have something to participate in that adds content to your board.
• Add some gaming RSS feeds to each of the specific game forums so that members always have fresh content available to talk about.
• Find a way to highlight your biggest feature--the gaming forums, both in the board design and in your advertising.
• Concentrate advertising efforts on other gaming boards as permitted. Request your members advertise your board link in their signatures on other boards, or a specific link to the current contest or impressive board stats or winners topic. Gamers are known for visiting multiple gaming boards. That is where you are going to attract more new members for your site.
• Feature your Detailed Statistics link somewhere more prominent, perhaps even in a welcome section. It gives guests a quick look at the sorts of things that are popular and interesting topics, and could help them make the decision to join your board.

I am currently investigating how to change the cut-off dates, as I foresaw this problem as well. As soon as I find out how to change it, I will.

A gaming skin is also being checked into, but I need skinners/graphically gifted people to design the custom imagesets, since any art I try to touch bursts into flame. <_______<

And lucky me, I have off tomorrow. I'll try to get to some of this stuff.

Thank you.

You can change the cut-off dates here:

ACP > Forum Control > Manage Forums > Edit forum > Postable Forum Settings:

At the bottom of the page find this:
"Default date cut off for topic display" Choose SHOW ALL from the drop down box.


This docummentation on displaying remote RSS feeds may be of help to you: http://bigboardsresources.com/index.php?showtopic=3247

Will do, thanks.

And how do I add an RSS Feed?

Instructions for importing RSS feeds are in my last reply, which you may have missed since I edited it in after I made the post. :)

However, if you are wanting an RSS feed of your board's most recent posts, see this topic:
http://bigboardsresources.com/index.php?showtopic=2643