Review Request: Metro's Baseball Boards

They have: 2 posts

Joined: May 2004

Hey folks,

New member here, in desperate need of some opinions. I'm running a baseball site (primarily a message board), which has been up for about 5 months. My website is currently listed #1 on both Google, and Yahoo! when searching baseball boards -- but for whatever the reasons, I've been having an extremely difficult time recieving any traffic from either source. I'm not really sure what the deal is, and it's been a very frustrating expirence.

I'm definetly not doing something right -- so, I figured I'd come here to request some feedback from you folks, since I have no idea what I'm doing wrong.

Thanks for the time, it is greatly appreciated! Smiling

take care,
-Derek. (MB Boards Founder/Host).

http://mbboards.homelinux.com:100/
http://mbboards.homelinux.com:100/forums/

Busy's picture

He has: 6,151 posts

Joined: May 2001

Welcome to TWF, could you review a few sites as per the posting agreement please, Thanks.

arwld's picture

They have: 6 posts

Joined: Oct 2004

We'll theres no right answer to that question.
Your home page is super busy.
Hard to decide where to start reading.
You have a link popularity of 33
3 of those are on google
Also your domain has no relation to the name of your site.
I'd start there. Sticking out tongue

Wish you had more traffic?
Try Traffic Genie

They have: 17 posts

Joined: Oct 2004

On 1024x768 i get a horizontal scroll bar. Im using IE 6.0. Also on the left table there is a white border that I don't like. I think the background might be too distracting. Then I am bit puzzeled as to why the down time of the servers is displayed as the apparent main item on the site. One thing about the forums, I noticed that you had a LOT of different discussion areas. For some of them you have to scroll quite far down. Maybe some could be grouped under a single name. I realize this would then require some forums 3 clicks to get to. Maybe bit more prominently display the actualy link to the forums I had to hunt for it for a bit. I just assumed it would be some where very visible since your site is all about the forums right? I guess if things didnt look so busy on the site the link to the forums would have been easy to spot as well.

C-Infinity Custom Computers: http://www.cinfinitysolutions.com

They have: 14 posts

Joined: Oct 2004

I'm getting a horizontal scroll bar also. You could try making the font smaller in the Server Schedule table.

He has: 16 posts

Joined: Aug 2004

I have a few comments from a forum point of view ...

1) For whatever reason, the forum takes a long time to load up. I'm on high speed, but it takes almost a minute to load up the forum. The horizontal scroll vanishes once the whole forum actually loads up, but between the time it takes to load, and seeing that horizontal scroll, a lot of people may decide to page away, rather than bother staying around and posting.

2) Too many boards. I understand the organization you are trying to do, but when I load up the forum, I find myself looking at a whole bunch of boards, all showing 0 posts, which doesn't encourage me to delve into things. (I have the same problem on one of my message forums ... if I hadn't already written off that particular forum, and didn't need all my attention elsewhere for a while, I'd start paring the boards down again ... it would help in attracting more people.)

Compress a bit, so not as much shows on the main screen, and people see more of a hint of activity.

Take all opinions with a grain of salt, but these are the thoughts that come to mind as I peek around the site. Your dedicated people are posting, but new visitors are probably overwealmed.

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