Hi all, I am building a network of forum sites, each dedicated to major sports and giving fans a place to voice their peace on who is the best of all time in many categories. The first one that is up and ready for traffic and for postings is: http://www.nflalltimebest.com All the posts so far are by me. Hoping to drive traffic soon. Please give me some honest feedback on: - Concept - Execution - Ability to monetize - Types of monetization I'm using - Logo and look/feel - All other things you would like to comment on. Appreciate everyone's candid feedback in advance! - Mark
The logo is nice but other then that it's too generic of a forum, a custom skin would benefit you. Seeing as your forum is new I would suggest removing some categories, as a couple actives ones is better then allot of empty ones. ~Rick
Rick, I appreciate the feedback. I tried custom skins first, which I liked better in terms of look....however the mods I had to apply to get Adsense to work with them on SMF were a bit tedious and never really worked. ANy thoughts on how to get the custom look and easily retain my adsense code? Also--I actually did keep the # of categories slim (or so I thought) for now...have many other ideas. I do hope to get a network of sports friends to drive some traffic to each of the categories out there now. THanks again! - Mark
I think category wise: You would be better to make the topics more broad and not so specific since it's a new forum and all
Using NFL in your URL could be a problem for you if you ever got big or a member of the nfl board regonized it.
as i keep saying, it's hard to start a forum from scratch with a lot of categories. what you have now is what your site should look like when it has a lot of activity. for now, get rid of the subcategories (linebackers, running backs, etc) and use just one forum. it's as if you're throwing the party, and the setting is divided into 12 different rooms, it will feel lonely, barren, empty. since you have only few (or no) guests right now, make everything converge into one space, then later on, when you get a lot of activity, divide it into subforums. remember, with forums, activity is key, and you ain't got much, so make the most of any activity you have, instead of splitting it up. you asked about monetization. monetization sucks for forums, but keep at it, maybe one day you'll be on par with digitalpoint.