Forum Name:
CancerHost Forums

Forum URL:
CancerHost - Powered by vBulletin

Comments:
CancerHost is a free and paid web hosting company that has one big goal. That goal is to provide friendly, top-of-the-line web hosting services and at the same time help out cancer research foundations. We do this by donating ad revenue, paid hosting revenue, and visitor donations to those foundations. We make absolutely zero personal profit from this. Once our server fees are paid for, every other penny goes to cancer research. Along with this, we provide a friendly community for anyone and everyone to hang out at. We discuss everything from technology to global news and beyond. The forums are slowly gaining more members and posts. For free web hosts we do a post for host. The amount of posts range from 5 posts to 75 posts for free resellers. We are also starting to provide shout casting.

Overall Ratings per Category
Design
(3/5)

Features and Modifications
(1/5)

Guest Friendliness
(3/5)

Guidelines and Staff
(4/5)

Organization and Navigation
(5/5)

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Design
Category Rating: (3/5)
Category Comments:
First and foremost, I like that you have multiple skins available. All being different in it's on way. A dark colored theme for those who enjoy the darker colors and a couple of light colored themes for the others. It seems to me that you just purchased/downloaded a couple of skins, edited the head banner, uploaded them, and that was that. I didn't really see any other design customizations to the skins that relate to your company. Have you thought about creating a company logo to brand your website? Personally, I find it very important to brand your company, so that members and guests can identify you when they see that logo. You should create custom thread icons! Being a support forum (with general discussion), if you had custom thread icons users could select a thread icon called "FTP" for FTP related problems. That was just an example, but I took a look a your support forum and there are number of thread icons I could think of. Just something to think about. It would make your community a little more customized and it's make it a little easier to identify the issue when browsing the forum.

Features and Modifications
Category Rating: (1/5)
Category Comments:
I don't really see any features or modifications to the board other then the installed skins. You should try adding a widget/module to the forum to show how much money has been earned for the cause. On your homepage (of http://www.cancerhost.com) you have exactly what I am talking about. It would be pretty cool to see those statistics from the forum. Seeing as how I have the forum bookmarked (and not the homepage), I wouldn't see those statistics unless I had gone to the homepage. Other then that, I really can't think of any other features that could be added to really benefit your community. I mean, there are a ton of features you could add, but nothing that would directly improve your overall forum. They would be added just to have (ie arcade).

Guest Friendliness
Category Rating: (3/5)
Category Comments:
The entire forum is viewable to the guest, which I like, because it is a support forum. If I were a onlooking guest browsing the forums to see what kind of customer support you offered through the forums; it's nice to know that I can browse the support threads and see the responses and response times. The welcome message could use some work. It's just the default message. Why not include your mission statement? Tell the guest what you're all about. If they missed it from your homepage and just went straight to your forum like I did, they wouldn't realize what your company is about. Make the guest feel welcome!

Guidelines and Staff
Category Rating: (4/5)
Category Comments:
I didn't really see any rules or guidelines. If you do have one, it shouldn't be that hard to spot. It's something that should be easy to find and right there for the guests/members to access. The FAQ from the tab menu is just the default vBulletin FAQ. You should add to it and personalize it for your company and community. Some things that could be answered; "How do you choose which foundation/charity gets your profits?" "Why are you doing this?" and on and on. There are number of things that could be answered about your company! Your staff seems point on (and I'd hope so since the main idea behind the community is the staff's support). When I had registered I was welcomed by both of the administrators. It's a nice gesture.

Organization and Navigation
Category Rating: (5/5)
Category Comments:
The forum categories/subforums are straight forward and easy to understand. Aside from the general discussion subforums, you have links to your hosting packages and before/after hosting support forums. Simply put, I found it very easy to navigate through your forums. Have you thought about putting a link to your donation page?