Vestroia Review

Graphics:
- Theme: Simple and clean. Maybe too simple for me. The colors are matching but the background seems like "Oh, is the page still loading?", if you get what I mean. Put up a background which is not so empty and still matches your forum. I also miss some pictures from the members posts. Aside from their avatar there is not too much of a picture there. Why don`t you find some pictures for the moods and the guardians (I don`t know how many guardians are there, but I am sure you can find at least one picture for all of them). The rank pictures are pretty simple ones too, so again, not my type. (5/10)
- Banner: I could have liked it but it is way too blurred. Seriously. Do something to fix that or just change it. And I suggest using some effects on the text there. It can boost the visual effect much. Except if your members like simplicity of course. The red background is still matching. (5/10)
- Navigation Bar: No buttons here. But first of all: where is the "Home" button there? Even if you don`t want to add some pictures, I think the "Home" shortcut must be there. On second thought, maybe I can`t see it cause I`m a guest? Anyway... Guests should see it too. (5/10)
- Icons: Nice, little, grey squares. But more importantly: not impressive at all. And too small if you ask me. And the topic icons seemed to me like the original ones with the theme (my apologies if they are not). Those are simple too. (5/10)
The sum of all is 20/40. I see that you have no "Gfx Designer" group. Maybe this is the time to get one.
Note that I am not only rating the pictures here. If you have your own pictures used in your forum, that is a plus point right in the beginning from me.

Categories & Forums:
You have a lot that is for sure. So lets start from the up to down. "Important Information": I have seen some misunderstanding about the "Q&A" and "Bugs" forums. And honestly, I don`t even see the point of making that two section separated. How is a member supposed to know that the question he got is a bug or it is not? You should just keep the one which contains the common thing of that two forum in its name: "Questions&Answers". Now before I continue, I must tell that I was unable to find the instruction on how to make a "Stall". I searched over an hour or more. If you have a description about that, then it should be a sticky one. Cause now I was unable to tell the difference between the "Fanarts" forum in the "Bakugan" category and the "Art Factory" in the "Stalls" category. The only difference is that you can request some graphic in the "Factory", but still it is about graphics so it can be mixed up together I think. Same goes to the "General Roleplaying" and "The Academy of Roleplaying" forums. Some minor spelling errors but it might be possible that I am the only one noticing that one ("Have an idea for a new cool new Bakugan or Card?"). (15/20).

Usergroups:
A total of 7 groups. Well since "I need to login to view group details", I was unable to do it properly, but I spotted one thing without that. Why is the "Banned" usergroup listed right after the "Administrators"? And the other thing I could not understand: why is there two "Global Moderators" group? So unfortunately I was unable to find out what can a "Ranked Brawler" do what regular ones can`t. You might have found it out by now, but I think you should make the usergroup descriptions visible to guests too. (13/20)

Activity:
I will have difficulties here too. I could not see the memberlist, so I will go around this on another way... You have a total of 604 members. Forum age is just a guess from my side too. It is Fri Oct 23, 2009 (the time the first admin joined I think). So it is roughly 164 days old. So you have 3.68 new member per day which is actually pretty nice. The recently connected members part is turned off I think, or maybe guests can`t see that either. The number of posts your members have made is 15 145. Now, from what I found out, I can tell that your members write 0,15 posts per day (from this calculation: 15 145 posts/604 members/164 days). Needless to say that it is poor. So it is not very impressive. (12/20)

More:
I noticed that in the forum named "The Academy of Roleplaying" you somehow use a different theme. And a better theme. At least for me. The icons are better too in that one. I`m just saying.

And so the average is 60/100 this time. Well, your forum is Average from my perspective in its current state. I think you can give your designers some work now. I hope you will get some more activity soon too. Just don`t give up and work hard.

Completed-->30 BoilingPoints deducted