Admin Junkies - Admin, SEO & Webmaster Community
Reviewed by Joshua Farrell
Reviewed by Joshua Farrell
First Impressions:
I've previously seen Admin Junkies at one point, and while I never joined early on at the time, I felt that the appearance of the forum looked pretty good then, and now. As I finally have come back to the forum without previously joining and looking around with fresh eyes, I noticed a few things.
Firstly, the index of the forum did take a few seconds longer to load the first couple of times around. This is generally typical for most forums, as having a non default theme does take a little longer to load, over the default theme that XenForo provides. As soon as I made my rounds around the forum a few times to see what the forum covered and was about, the caching of the basic stuff to the style, made my load time drastically better. I admit I didn't know if the theme would be so easy for my browser to cache upfront.
The forum index itself isn't too long, though the sidebar inflates the length a little. To me, the articles widget, inflates the first time loading speed.
There aren't many ads on the forum, which is a plus, considering the more ads shown on a forum, the longer the load would be, regardless of how fast everything else loads for the first time.
I rate my first impressions of the forum, as good. Though consideration needs to be put forward to see if the articles widget load time can be decreased, even if by a small amount.
Rating: Good
Appearance:
The appearance overall to the forum, seems pretty well put together. The available themes that can be selected from, helps bring variety in what you are looking at. I find the availability of the dark themes, as a good alternative over having two pretty bright themes available.
The footer area that is available, has all the needed items to be combined well with the forum's appearance, with it jumping out enough to know that it won't be something that you will become blind to. Contains just enough information to make the appearance of the section, just right in size. I've seen plenty of forums attempt to put stuff here, that never looked good. This area shows that length and appearance was considered, which is a good thing!
The differences in which widget appears, based on the theme, is a nice addition. Makes me want to consider running the theme that has the affiliate images in the footer, to see who is being sponsored as an affiliate of the forum.
The inside of threads in each theme, isn't overbearing on the designing and graphic appearance, which is nice.
My main issue with the appearance, is the number of items in the Navigation Menu. Even on desktop with the screen size I have, the members navigation item is hidden by the scroll arrow for the navigation menu. Might want to consider either combining the forum tab with the home tab, or consider looking to see what can be combined into one drop down menu, to allow seeing everything in the menu, without scrolling.
Overall thought on the appearance of the forum, regardless of what theme I am on, is good. There are considerations that might help basic appearances a little more, which is minor anyways, if people don't mind clicking on stuff to find an item.
Rating: Good
Member/Forum Activity:
Considering the content amounts on the forum, and general activity from the members that are registered, I consider the forum statistics and member count a pretty good combination of activity, and numbers.
Looking at the age of the forum, 25,000 total posts made by a near 300 members, is pretty good in nearly a year of being open.
Staff Post Count, in comparison to overall numbers is great. There are plenty of members who made more than a couple hundred posts. Though I recommend trying to get some members to contribute just a tiny bit more. It is a small thing, but having 400-500 post difference between the regular members on the bottom of the top 20 list, compared to the regular members at the top, shows that there might be something that needs to be looked into, to make members want to be active a little more than even the good activity that is there.
I'm rating this section as Excellent, even with the post count difference between the top regular non staff poster, and the member on the bottom of the list.
Rating: Excellent
Staff & Usergroups:
Considering this is a webmaster community, based on giving webmasters a place to go to communicate and to get some services at cost from being involved with the community, I consider the staff count pretty good, for what is available to the community.
Not too many staff, for the member count. This is good.
From the looks of it, having a couple of staff for services might not be the best, if the forum membership was to suddenly jump, and more requests between the two main services started coming in. I recommend getting 1 to 2 more members of the service staff.
Considering the number of Administrators, the moderator count seems pretty solid for the community size. If the goal is to eventually have a much more active community, having additional 1 more moderator available that strictly moderates, might be helpful.
Knowing how hard it is to staff and get an active community, I am not going to press too hard on the need for more staff. The only thing I want to have considered, is having one more service team member to split up requests, so that none of the current service members get too burned out, if requests suddenly start coming in, in large batches.
Rating: Good
Originality:
Webmaster Communities in general, is something that is hard to be original in. Doing a basic webmaster forum, it is hard to create services that might be different from the typical that is available.
Having a classifieds section available in the header that is available to members to directly get paid in cash to complete services in, is a pretty good idea. I don't see many webmaster forums consider using an addon to allow something like this to make it easier to be paid. Having the multiple options that come with posting the classified services, seems like a better idea, over hoping people will post those options normally in a marketplace board. Plus it reduces the need to provide templates or to force members to format what they want to offer.
Having an additional typical area for marketplace discussions, does help with allowing people to provide public comment on a service. This makes the available options more original than what I would have expected otherwise, on a Webmaster Forum.
What might be an option to consider, is to allow the sales through the classified section, to go straight to the individual offering the service, if the classifieds work the way I think it is coded. Having an option to not have to ask for money earned, will help with return use without complication.
Rating: Excellent
Grammar & Spelling:
The grammar and spelling around the forum, seems to be written with thought. I see no issues with either of them, as I have browsed around the forum looking through board descriptions and service information threads.
Keep up the good work, and I hope that as you expand on your services, that the excellence continues!
Rating: Excellent
As I have been officially browsing around and looking through things for the first time officially, the forum seems to be made with offering unique items that would otherwise not be available to the typical webmaster and administrative community. Outside of some minor loading issues due to what is available upfront, the forum seems to be one of the better upcoming webmaster communities to date.
Continue to look into providing a top notch service, and make sure that you continue to offer top quality to those who need the help! Good job to the community to helping people feel welcome!
Continue to look into providing a top notch service, and make sure that you continue to offer top quality to those who need the help! Good job to the community to helping people feel welcome!
