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Forum design

Cthulhu

Administrator
AKA
Yop
So liek, I tried to convert the frontpage's layout to the forums, but this forum software's template system is all Klatchian to me. It's even worse than vB's, :/.

Bottom line, I can't make anything out of it, so we'll need a website designer to do a proper layout thingy.

I was able to set the frontpage's logo (on my own system btw) and set the background color of the body, but I wasn't able to figure out where goes what for the rest, basically :/.

Right now, we could just keep going with the current layout until we find someone willing and able to do and implement the design, or find a layout that sorta matches the front page's (dark / greenish), and edit some of the stuffs such as our own logo.

There's a lot more content and styling needed on the forums compared to the frontpage, so it would take quite some time even if you knew what you were doing. I'll goan look for existing themes, see if there's anything that we can use. If not, we'll just use the default one for now.

Edit: Blargh, not too many themes available for this version, see =37]here.
 

Cthulhu

Administrator
AKA
Yop
Good enough, but it's not compatible with our version of the forum software, :monster:. We're looking for skins that are compatible with version 2.0 Beta 4, the URL I tried to post above failed though, they're using 'tarded URL structures for some reason.
 

X-SOLDIER

Harbinger O Great Justice
AKA
X
Oh ffs. Why can't this be SIMPLE. I believe the "Simple" in SMF is slightly misleading. (speaking of which - we need a better news poast than the welcome to smf).


X :neo:
 

Cthulhu

Administrator
AKA
Yop
Tròth. On that, SMF has a feature that allows you to designate one forum as the news forum and display the latest posts in that forum on the frontpage (of the forum, yarly). Since we're probably not going to use the forums for news, do we still need that thar? It can be disabl'd.

And if I could be arsed I'd write an integration thingy so that the frontpage news would appear there, but alas.
 

Kuraudo

Ex-Soldier
AKA
Cloudsoul
Surprised you guys didn't go with PHPbb, I've never had any issues with them. Plus their skins are easily codeable, can replace icons etc. I've never worked with VB though. I know that's a real issue in pain in web designing (forums that is) is there no "mods" for SMF version you guys use?
 

Cthulhu

Administrator
AKA
Yop
There are, just not much yet :monster:. It's a relatively new version of the software (2.0 beta 4), so things still have to get started on it.

PHPBB... I dunno, it just didn't look right. Also, I did work with vB, and while it's got over nine thousaaaand features most forum software doesn't have, it is difficult to design (although easier than this one, I must admit) and it's quite outdated, I think. I'm hoping they make it worth the $180 or something for 4.0, but I have my doubts.

I'd like to see forum software that's properly designed according to both OO-style coding and with an easy to use template system that doesn't include web-based editing of the stuff. It's not hard to use Smarty or some other readable format for templates, and instead of having to use a web interface, I much prefer using a proper text editor with basic stuff like syntax highlighting and line numbering.

On that issue, I think that Java-based technologies such as JSP (mainly JSP tags) and Wicket are much more awesome, since both of them allow the designer to use properly formatted XHTML (i.e. XML inside HTML) in their templates, without blocks of code in between html.
 

Cat Rage Room

Great Old One
AKA
Mog
Forum skin?

I know you guys are working hard. But I'm here to BE A PEST AND REMIND YOU guys to hurry up and upgrade the forum look/skin to match the main site.
 

Cthulhu

Administrator
AKA
Yop
Re: Forum skin?

I'll see what I can do today on the skin, but no promises that it'll either look good or be done today.
 

Seph

Dark Knight
AKA
Seph Stampede
Re: Forum skin?

Honestly, I do not like the current forum skin AT ALL. It hurts my eyes. Match the site skin now please? :)
 

Cthulhu

Administrator
AKA
Yop
Re: Forum skin?

done, :monster:.

It's an early version, colors and such are (largely) updated, forum width is equal to that of the frontpage, same header image, etc.

The frontpage will need some new buttons to match the style (I vote 'yea' to just using cookie monster like on FFOF, :monster: ), and probably a load of tweaks to make it look right.

The avatar width(s) is just a bit too large, making a scrollbar appear. I can either reduce the max width of avatars, or change the behaviour of where it's displayed (so that the container stretches instead of the image getting a scrollbar). Same applies to signatures, but I'd rather have oversized signatures removed.

As said, it's an early version, and some stuff still looks like shite :monster:. If you think you know better, lemme know what you'd like to see changed and/or supply me with a mockup done in Photoshoop or something.

edit: fixxed the avatar width thingy.
 

Tetsujin

he/they
AKA
Tets
BTW, everytime I log in, I get an error message (even though it always logs me in perfectly fine).
 
Re: Forum skin?

[quote author=Cthulhu link=topic=94.msg1344#msg1344 date=1228903810]
edit: fixxed the avatar width thingy.
[/quote]
I love it! I was getting a little used to the default one, but this looks very nice.

I think you get the same width issue with signatures.
 

Cthulhu

Administrator
AKA
Yop
Re: Forum skin?

Yar, people should just not use oversized signatures, :monster:.

I'm not a fan of the current border setup, looks messy at the bottom of threads. I'd also like to see some kinda border around the main content on the left and right sides, for justice. But I'll look into that later, fgj.

Should also work on the quote box, doesn't really stand out much at the moment.
 
I get it sometimes too, but I just logged in and out and no error message.
It's something along the lines of, "Your login was unsuccessful", but then if you refresh you're logged in just fine.
 

Strangelove

AI Researcher
AKA
hitoshura
New layout looks nice :monster:

But now, that top part of each post (with the quote, modify, etc. buttons) has over-extended on my computer. It's the same size as the user details on the left. So there's a big gap at the top of each post for me, especially if someone has an avatar.
 
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