 Hogwarts ROL
| | First Impressions |  |
- My first impressions when I first laid eyes on your forum were to put it simply: Amazing. The banner when the page first loads, while a little on the big side, looks absolutely awesome and definitely has a Harry Potter look and feel to it. I love the mist effect that you have on the logo, it makes it have a mildly spooky vibe to it that makes you want to scroll down to find out more about the forum. Which I do, so I begin to scroll through the rest forum, and as I do so, this same vibe continues with the background picture of what looks to be a hallway within Hogwarts. It does a good job of setting the mood for what might be to come. As I reach the main forum and categories of the forum, I notice they appear to be very organized and structured in a way that is easy to understand. All of these things come together to form an excellent first impression of your forum.
| | Forum Appearance |  |
- When it comes to the appearance of your forum, it does not fail to impress. I can honestly say I have never seen such an awesome design that utilizes so many cool effects. You have a done a fantastic job of making effects that seem to be ‘magical’ when you look at them. One good example of this is the way you have the user profile data fade in with a cool effect when you hover over the avatar on a post. Another great example of a cool effect I really like is the way you have the forum descriptions fade in on hover, which is a very cool effect. I have never seen a level of web design so cool and interactive and that works so seamlessly. Your graphic design and coding team should be very proud of the work they have done on the forum, it is truly professional grade work. With this said, I would like to circle back around to the background image of the forum I alluded to in the first impressions section. As a Harry Potter fan myself, I must say I really like and enjoy the background image you guys choose. It is clearly one of the hallways in Hogwarts with some creepy writing at the base of the left wall that says ‘Mister Potter’ (personally reminds me of something out of the Chamber Of Secrets with Basilisk writing in blood on the walls). The background adds a bit of a horror/mystery theme to the forum that I think certainly sets the mood for what can be expected within the roleplays of the forum, so I think you made a great choice when choosing the background. Moving on to your forum icons, the ones on the homepage are fantastic like the rest of the design. The ones in the forum sections themselves (New Post/No New Posts, locked, etc.), are fairly basic in design but otherwise they look nice and blend with the rest of the design very well. If I could offer a suggestion on the icons, it would be that something specific to Harry Potter would certainly look cool and add a nice touch to already awesome design. I am not sure what exactly, but there are plenty of ideas from the Harry Potter universe to choose from, I am sure there is something out that would look cool. The only other ‘problem’ I see with the design, is that the video that comes up when you click on the image of a hand holding the ‘2’ in the bottom left corner lacks an exit button to close the video once it opens. This results in the user having to refresh the page to get rid of it. My suggestion would be to look into adding an exit/’X’ button to that popup so that users can exit that video popup without a refresh. That is the only issue I was able to find with your otherwise flawless design. I just want to say once more before I move to members and activity, that you and your team have done a fantastic job with the design of your site and your team should be very proud of that.
| | Members and Forum Activity | |
- As with the rest of your forum, the members and activity of your forum is very impressive. It might be the most active forum I have seen in a long time. I monitored the activity of your forum for almost 3 days straight and every single one of those days saw several posts being made to the forum. This is an incredible feat for a forum to reach these days, so very well done on that. I also noticed you guys have active social media accounts that you use to promote the forum which is by far the most effective way to the forum in front of the most people. I was pleasantly surprised to see you guys also had your own YouTube channel and even internet radio station that you guys run. You might just be the only forum I have ever seen that operates its own online radio station (and I run a broadcasting forum), so that was definitely cool to see. If you guys want to take that idea to the next level, you could try setting it up, so that the forum plays Harry Potter theme music automatically whenever the forum opens. This would add a cool touch to the forum. But getting back to the activity of your forum: You guys truly have covered all the bases in terms of driving as much traffic as possible to your forum. Most forums struggle in this review category and there are many forums that can learn from what you guys are doing at Hogwarts ROL. Your social media team should be very proud of the excellent work they have done getting traffic and activity to the forum.
| | Staff and Usergroups | |
- As is the case with the rest of the categories I have covered so far, your forum once again gets perfect marks for staff and usergroups. I am quite impressed with just how large of a staff team you have on your forum, and each with their own unique job titles as well. You even have dedicated social media staff, which as I alluded to earlier in this review has done a phenomenal job of driving traffic to your forum. I have never seen a forum with a dedicated social media team before, but I think it is a big reason why your forum does so well across the board with activities and members. Of course, the awesome forum design and impressive roleplay stories (yes, I read the first page of a couple of them) certainly are a large part of it as well. You have some creative and well written (as far as I can through Google Translator anyway) roleplays. This is no doubt the reason why your members have no problem coming back day after day to post and keep active on the forum. Overall, you have a great team helping to run your forum, one that is clearly dedicated and very good at what they do, and the result of this dedication and hard work has led to the successful forum you have.
| | Forum Originality | |
- Let us now move on to the forum originality portion of this review. I think anyone who takes even so much as a glance at your forum will know right away that they have stumbled across something that is unique and original in almost every way. The design of Hogwarts ROL is unique and original, the reasons for this I already covered in the Appearance section of this review, so I will just leave it at that. Now let’s take a look at the 2nd thing that goes into forum originality: the theme/genre of your forum. While a Harry Potter RPG forum is not something that has never been done before, I do think the approach you guys have taken to building and running a Harry Potter RPG is original. As I touched on earlier, I believe the design of the forum is 2nd to none and I think some of things you have done in terms of having a YouTube Channel and online radio station to coincide with your forum add a level of originality anyone will be hard pressed to find anywhere else. Which brings me into the 3rd and final aspect of forum originality: content originality. As touched on a couple times in this review already, the content of your forum in all areas appears to be original. The RPG stories themselves are unique storylines with a rich level of detail that make you feel as if you are actually in the story. This is the mark of true storytelling and writing, and for this reason I think there is little doubt that the roleplay stories on your forum are original to your forum. It can be very hard to come up with unique, creative storylines for a roleplay, but you have done it repeatedly with several great roleplay stories. This is undoubtedly the most important reason why members on your forum remain active and involved with the roleplay stories on your forum.
| | Reviewer's Feedback | |
- This is usually the part of the review where I would give a summary of all the feedback I have given throughout the review on how to improve your forum. However, in the case of your forum I do not have very much feedback to give. This is because your forum is already great in almost every way. I went over the forum with a fine-tooth comb looking for any area that may need some improvement, but after hours of observation I am pleasantly surprised to find that there really are none. The only real ‘problem’ I was able to find on the forum was with the YouTube video popup that I mentioned in the Appearance section of this review. That problem should be easy enough fix for your amazing team of coders. The only other minor thing I would suggest would be seeing if you can replace the forum ‘New Post’/’No New Post’, etc. icons with something cool from the Harry Potter universe. This is more of something I think would be a cool touch for the forum, and not so much a necessary change that needs to be made. Overall, your forum is one of the best I have ever had the opportunity to review, and I think that your forum is what virtually every forum aspires to be: successful.
| Average Review Score: 10/10 |
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[center][img]https://i.servimg.com/u/f18/16/89/96/68/yfr11.png[/img]
[size=18][font=Trebuchet MS]Hogwarts ROL[/font][/size][/center]
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[list]
[*]My first impressions when I first laid eyes on your forum were to put it simply: Amazing. The banner when the page first loads, while a little on the big side, looks absolutely awesome and definitely has a Harry Potter look and feel to it. I love the mist effect that you have on the logo, it makes it have a mildly spooky vibe to it that makes you want to scroll down to find out more about the forum. Which I do, so I begin to scroll through the rest forum, and as I do so, this same vibe continues with the background picture of what looks to be a hallway within Hogwarts. It does a good job of setting the mood for what might be to come. As I reach the main forum and categories of the forum, I notice they appear to be very organized and structured in a way that is easy to understand. All of these things come together to form an excellent first impression of your forum.
[/list]
[table width="100%;"][tr][td valign="middle" width="50px" style="font-size:20px;background:#333;padding:8px;text-align:center;border-radius:2px 0 0 2px;"] [color=#ffffff][b][font=FontAwesome][/font][/b][/color][/td][td style="background:#333;padding-left:5px;width:38%;text-align:center;border-radius:0 2px 2px 0"][color=#FFFFFF][b][size=14]Forum Appearance [/size][/b][/color][/td][td style="text-align:right;" align="right" valign="middle"][img]https://i.servimg.com/u/f62/18/64/98/14/10_b11.png[/img][/td][/tr][/table]
[list]
[*]When it comes to the appearance of your forum, it does not fail to impress. I can honestly say I have never seen such an awesome design that utilizes so many cool effects. You have a done a fantastic job of making effects that seem to be ‘magical’ when you look at them. One good example of this is the way you have the user profile data fade in with a cool effect when you hover over the avatar on a post. Another great example of a cool effect I really like is the way you have the forum descriptions fade in on hover, which is a very cool effect. I have never seen a level of web design so cool and interactive and that works so seamlessly. Your graphic design and coding team should be very proud of the work they have done on the forum, it is truly professional grade work. With this said, I would like to circle back around to the background image of the forum I alluded to in the first impressions section. As a Harry Potter fan myself, I must say I really like and enjoy the background image you guys choose. It is clearly one of the hallways in Hogwarts with some creepy writing at the base of the left wall that says ‘Mister Potter’ (personally reminds me of something out of the Chamber Of Secrets with Basilisk writing in blood on the walls). The background adds a bit of a horror/mystery theme to the forum that I think certainly sets the mood for what can be expected within the roleplays of the forum, so I think you made a great choice when choosing the background. Moving on to your forum icons, the ones on the homepage are fantastic like the rest of the design. The ones in the forum sections themselves (New Post/No New Posts, locked, etc.), are fairly basic in design but otherwise they look nice and blend with the rest of the design very well. If I could offer a suggestion on the icons, it would be that something specific to Harry Potter would certainly look cool and add a nice touch to already awesome design. I am not sure what exactly, but there are plenty of ideas from the Harry Potter universe to choose from, I am sure there is something out that would look cool. The only other ‘problem’ I see with the design, is that the video that comes up when you click on the image of a hand holding the ‘2’ in the bottom left corner lacks an exit button to close the video once it opens. This results in the user having to refresh the page to get rid of it. My suggestion would be to look into adding an exit/’X’ button to that popup so that users can exit that video popup without a refresh. That is the only issue I was able to find with your otherwise flawless design. I just want to say once more before I move to members and activity, that you and your team have done a fantastic job with the design of your site and your team should be very proud of that.
[/list]
[table width="100%;"][tr][td valign="middle" width="50px" style="font-size:20px;background:#39c;padding:8px;text-align:center;border-radius:2px 0 0 2px;"][color=#ffffff][b][font=FontAwesome][/font][/b][/color][/td][td style="background:#39c;padding-left:5px;width:38%;text-align:center;border-radius:0 2px 2px 0"][color=#FFFFFF][b][size=14]Members and Forum Activity[/size][/b][/color][/td][td style="text-align:right;" align="right" valign="middle"][img]https://i.servimg.com/u/f62/18/64/98/14/1011.png[/img][/td][/tr][/table]
[list]
[*]As with the rest of your forum, the members and activity of your forum is very impressive. It might be the most active forum I have seen in a long time. I monitored the activity of your forum for almost 3 days straight and every single one of those days saw several posts being made to the forum. This is an incredible feat for a forum to reach these days, so very well done on that. I also noticed you guys have active social media accounts that you use to promote the forum which is by far the most effective way to the forum in front of the most people. I was pleasantly surprised to see you guys also had your own YouTube channel and even internet radio station that you guys run. You might just be the only forum I have ever seen that operates its own online radio station (and I run a broadcasting forum), so that was definitely cool to see. If you guys want to take that idea to the next level, you could try setting it up, so that the forum plays Harry Potter theme music automatically whenever the forum opens. This would add a cool touch to the forum. But getting back to the activity of your forum: You guys truly have covered all the bases in terms of driving as much traffic as possible to your forum. Most forums struggle in this review category and there are many forums that can learn from what you guys are doing at Hogwarts ROL. Your social media team should be very proud of the excellent work they have done getting traffic and activity to the forum.
[/list]
[table width="100%;"][tr][td valign="middle" width="50px" style="font-size:20px;background:#333;padding:8px;text-align:center;border-radius:2px 0 0 2px;"] [color=#ffffff][b][font=FontAwesome][/font][/b][/color][/td][td style="background:#333;padding-left:5px;width:38%;text-align:center;border-radius:0 2px 2px 0"][color=#FFFFFF][b][size=14]Staff and Usergroups[/size][/b][/color][/td][td style="text-align:right;" align="right" valign="middle"][img]https://i.servimg.com/u/f62/18/64/98/14/10_b11.png[/img][/td][/tr][/table]
[list]
[*]As is the case with the rest of the categories I have covered so far, your forum once again gets perfect marks for staff and usergroups. I am quite impressed with just how large of a staff team you have on your forum, and each with their own unique job titles as well. You even have dedicated social media staff, which as I alluded to earlier in this review has done a phenomenal job of driving traffic to your forum. I have never seen a forum with a dedicated social media team before, but I think it is a big reason why your forum does so well across the board with activities and members. Of course, the awesome forum design and impressive roleplay stories (yes, I read the first page of a couple of them) certainly are a large part of it as well. You have some creative and well written (as far as I can through Google Translator anyway) roleplays. This is no doubt the reason why your members have no problem coming back day after day to post and keep active on the forum. Overall, you have a great team helping to run your forum, one that is clearly dedicated and very good at what they do, and the result of this dedication and hard work has led to the successful forum you have.
[/list]
[table width="100%;"][tr][td valign="middle" width="50px" style="font-size:20px;background:#39c;padding:8px;text-align:center;border-radius:2px 0 0 2px;"][color=#ffffff][b][font=FontAwesome][/font][/b][/color][/td][td style="background:#39c;padding-left:5px;width:38%;text-align:center;border-radius:0 2px 2px 0"][color=#FFFFFF][b][size=14]Forum Originality[/size][/b][/color][/td][td style="text-align:right;" align="right" valign="middle"][img]https://i.servimg.com/u/f62/18/64/98/14/1011.png[/img][/td][/tr][/table]
[list]
[*]Let us now move on to the forum originality portion of this review. I think anyone who takes even so much as a glance at your forum will know right away that they have stumbled across something that is unique and original in almost every way. The design of Hogwarts ROL is unique and original, the reasons for this I already covered in the Appearance section of this review, so I will just leave it at that. Now let’s take a look at the 2nd thing that goes into forum originality: the theme/genre of your forum. While a Harry Potter RPG forum is not something that has never been done before, I do think the approach you guys have taken to building and running a Harry Potter RPG is original. As I touched on earlier, I believe the design of the forum is 2nd to none and I think some of things you have done in terms of having a YouTube Channel and online radio station to coincide with your forum add a level of originality anyone will be hard pressed to find anywhere else. Which brings me into the 3rd and final aspect of forum originality: content originality. As touched on a couple times in this review already, the content of your forum in all areas appears to be original. The RPG stories themselves are unique storylines with a rich level of detail that make you feel as if you are actually in the story. This is the mark of true storytelling and writing, and for this reason I think there is little doubt that the roleplay stories on your forum are original to your forum. It can be very hard to come up with unique, creative storylines for a roleplay, but you have done it repeatedly with several great roleplay stories. This is undoubtedly the most important reason why members on your forum remain active and involved with the roleplay stories on your forum.
[/list]
[table width="100%;"][tr][td valign="middle" width="50px" style="font-size:20px;background:#39c;padding:8px;text-align:center;border-radius:2px 0 0 2px;"][color=#ffffff][b][font=FontAwesome][/font][/b][/color][/td][td style="background:#39c;padding-left:5px;width:38%;text-align:center;border-radius:0 2px 2px 0"][color=#FFFFFF][b][size=14]Reviewer's Feedback[/size][/b][/color][/td][td style="text-align:right;" align="right" valign="middle"][img]https://i.servimg.com/u/f62/18/64/98/14/10_b11.png[/img][/td][/tr][/table]
[list]
[*] This is usually the part of the review where I would give a summary of all the feedback I have given throughout the review on how to improve your forum. However, in the case of your forum I do not have very much feedback to give. This is because your forum is already great in almost every way. I went over the forum with a fine-tooth comb looking for any area that may need some improvement, but after hours of observation I am pleasantly surprised to find that there really are none. The only real ‘problem’ I was able to find on the forum was with the YouTube video popup that I mentioned in the Appearance section of this review. That problem should be easy enough fix for your amazing team of coders. The only other minor thing I would suggest would be seeing if you can replace the forum ‘New Post’/’No New Post’, etc. icons with something cool from the Harry Potter universe. This is more of something I think would be a cool touch for the forum, and not so much a necessary change that needs to be made. Overall, your forum is one of the best I have ever had the opportunity to review, and I think that your forum is what virtually every forum aspires to be: successful.
[/list]
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[table style="width:100%;"][tr][td style="text-align:center;"][b][color=#3399cc]Average[/color] [color=#333333]Review[/color] [color=#3399cc]Score[/color]:[/b] 10/10[/td][/tr][/table]
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Hogwarts Rol - Complex Review
by DubanBlack April 10th 2022, 2:58 am
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when a solution is found.
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