Name of Board: Before the Fall
Link to Board:[/] CLICK HERE
[b]Short description of Board: An AU 9th Pass Pern game
Analysis Notes: This board is newly opened and I am unsure of how well it is put together. I need opinions on the overall look and skin mostly. I have been debating back and forth about changing it to another skin.
Link to profile on the Board: MELISSA

Okay, here goes! :) I'll try to focus on your organization and skin.

Organisation: First off, I wouldn't link to the portal right away. Most people don't like starting off at the portal, and when I first clicked the link, I was a little confused, since it looks really crowded with the three columns of information side by side.

You may want to re-organize your Info forum; the topics might be best ordered as:
- Plot
- History
- Rules
- Important NPCs
- Hatching Record

Just a thought! :3

The rest of the forum could be better organized into fewer topics. For example:

1. DRAGON INFORMATION
-- The Dragons of Pern
-- Dragon Sizes
-- Dragon Demographics
2. AREA AND SETTING
-- Map of Brendan Weyr
-- Crafthalls of Pern
-- Time Ratio on the Board (possibly can be its own topic, but could be included here, too)
3. WEYR INFORMATION
-- Weyrs of Pern
4. CANDIDATE LIFE
5. HATCHLINGS

You might want to include some basic information on DRoP either in the main forum or the Player Handbook. It would definitely help new readers!

History of Pern:
This sentence is irrelevant: "No one knows how it started, but it had devastating effect on the population of Pern." The opening paragraph could be better phrased as:

That paragraph itself is rather choppy and could be reworded.

Plot: Ad =/= plot!!!

Also, this just restates part of the History? You have a lot of information that says the same thing scattered across your forum. It would be best to merge your history and plot into one topic, with the plot as the first post, and the history as the second post, so members can read further if they so desire. Since the history is repeated in the plot, I'd make sure only one of them has the information; not both.

The current plots is a great addition at the bottom -- it's very helpful and shows members exactly what they need to know! I'm glad your plot is nice and concise, but at the same time, it's very confusing to someone who has not read DRoP much!

Important NPCs: Very helpful! It's also very well organized. :)

Application: Very clean and easy to read, props to you! It's simple, functional and easy to navigate. :)

In one part, it says "WEAKNESSES STRENGTHS" -- do you mean for people to list either strengths and weaknesses, three of each, or does it not matter? Though, you have personality strengths already, so really, I would just get rid of this section. You've already got a fairly detailed application. No need to go overboard! :)

Character Directory: It might be easier to have a more simple roster. For example:

Elayne | 24 | JR Weyrwoman | Gold Kiarath | Fort Weyr
Tallis | 17 Turns | Weyrling | Gold Rhianth | Fort Weyr
Laenaya | 28 | Headwoman | Fort Weyr

It might be helpful to have a list of the number of males, females, dragon colours, etc.

TOTAL MEMBERS: xx
Males: x, Females: y
Bronze: w
Brown: x
Gold: y
Green: z

And so on! Then new members could easily see what you need more of. :)

Appearance: I think you might want to consider a slightly darker skin; the banner is very dark and uses a lot of blue- and red-tones, and that isn't really reflected in your skin. The red that is used in your skin is a totally different hue/ saturation. The red in your banner is a more of a pink, #FF7E63, but the reds in your skin are maroons and deep reds. Also, since you have differently-coloured suns in your banner and sidebar, it throws it off even more. For your sidebar, if you want an image, I'd suggest just having the text "Before the Fall" displayed sans the sun. Also, for some reason, the links in your sidebar are drastically changing size. For whatever reason, the person who coded your skin either forgot to set the font-sizes to the same one, or did it intentionally? (Not your fault at all, it just looks silly!) Here's how to change it if you want to:

Just make it so the font-size is the same for both, so either 10px or 12px.

I doubt you need an Activity Check forum; you could easily just make those announcements in the general Announcement forum, and then archive them once you're finished. It makes it seem like Activity Checks are A Big Deal, and you don't want that. :(

References & Information Seems like a weird name for a forum; "Game Information" might better explain the purpose of the forum?

Layout:
Announcements Looks good so far. It might be nice to have a short description of each new announcement in your sidebar and a way to click "more", in the OOC News section. If you link to your announcements from there, it'd be pretty helpful :3

In Game News & Gossip: Could be merged with the Relationships or Plot boards.

IC areas: There are no descriptions! Anywhere! As someone who has never read DRoP, this is not very helpful. Even for someone who has read the books, seeing Admins make the effort to describe all pertinent locations is a big help. Sometimes you might forget what something looks like, or just want to be able to double check. You could easily add in some descriptions to the subforums and leave the forums as they are. :)

Graphics & Requests: Could be merged with the chat forum (as a subforum of it)

[i]You might want to consider expanding your Archive section to include IC thread archives, and possibly OOC archives as well.

Staff: Maybe instead of the dashes, have something that says "Characters" or some such? I wasn't sure what the dashes meant for a moment until I noticed there was an arrow, indicating it was a drop down list. :p

Clicking on Alyen, H'Den, or Anaiya leads somewhere else -- well, not to the profile. :p Might want to fix that! :)

General Feedback: You have quite a bit of information, which is great, but it's spread out a lot! Try condensing it so it's more manageable and less intimidating. You may also want to consider making your forum more accessible to those who haven't read the DRoP series.

Wow! Thanks you so much for all suggestions. I am really working on trying to get the board all pretty.

(first off, I apologize if anything I say is just a repeat of something Tammi mentioned. I should have a second opinion here, and I just hope that if I notice something, that just means it's all the more noticeable. ^.^ )

Appearance and Organization: I love the way your skin works. It's a beautiful job, especially the seamlessness of it all. It's easy to read and navigate as well. I'm not entirely certain how well it fits with the board's theme, but I think even then it works out well.

The organization seems to make sense to me and is fairly easy to navigate. Your links to "Weyr Information" and "Crafter Information" both lead to hatching records, so you might want to fix that. Otherwise, it's easy to get to everything. I also appreciate the use of subboards instead of making things incredibly long. I wonder if you really need to list every Wyer of Pern as a board though. Is it really that likely that you're going to go everywhere? You don't want too much, after all. If you're planning on heading that way, then by all means, keep them around. It's also a good idea to hold back something like that, then spring it on members later as a "look at this new area that opened up!"

Informational Topics: I think your topics are well organized enough but... let me put it this way: you're what I call a full immersion RP. You provide loads and loads of information, which makes the world seem quite real and well developed. It means that people will definitely know what's going on, and it makes you feel as if you're entering a brand new world completely.

the flip side of this is that people really don't want to read through all that, usually. Most people are going to skim these things at best, ignore them most likely, and be scared by them at worst. The rules were condensed fairly well, though I do think some could have been combined (spamming and OoC posts for example). but what gets me is that there are pages of information that you're asking a person to read before they get into the site.

Now, I know the fandom well, having read McCaffery's every book. So I realize that there's loads of details in her novels and you want to include that. That can be a good thing, especially if you're hinting that you want an advanced, full immersion RP. If you're hoping for intermediate or for more casual RPers, you might want to consider easing back on the droves of information.

Board Strengths: The droves of information provide a full immersion experience. I also love, love, love the way your skin works out well. Furthermore, I haven't seen much in the way of Dragonriders RP, yet it's good enough fantasy to snag people.

Board Weaknesses: Droves of information can drive away casual RPers and/or people who are just turned off by such things (myself included). There's some link issues, but that's pretty easy to fix. Also not sure if you don't have too big a sandbox to play in here.

Staff: Easy to figure out, and you seem friendly from what I can glean. I'm only seeing one real presence, which seems to be a generalized account, so that works out fine. I also want to compliment you on actually apping your chars despite being staff. All too often I've seen staff who are too snooty to do so.

General: You are an impressively well done, full immersion, advanced Dragonriders of Pern RP. I think that something like what you've got has the potential to go all the way, since it's obvious that people are putting loads of effort into the site. You might want to work on rounding off those rules and carefully balancing the line between being friendly for new people and still keeping that full immersion feel. Either way, I wish you the best of luck, and hope that your forum thrives.

Thanks so much for your information. I am trying to work out how much information SHOULD be on the board and how much there should be on for those that like more information. I would like to appeal to both the causal and the more advanced writes at the same time. I guess I haven't quite figured it out yet. Do you think a Required Basic Read would work and then have all the information threads as optional?

I didn't think about the number of boards and now that I think about it we are going to be focusing in three main areas so I might just trim them down. Thanks for the suggestion.

I'd definitely go with a "required read" section, then leave the rest of it up. It's great that you've got all that available, like i said. Just give me what i need to have my char running about, and leave the rest for later perusal, should work well. ^.^