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PunBB Forums → PunBB 1.2 show off → Any feedback please on my new forum
This is a forum where some acquaintances of mine talk mostly about the Red Sox (hence all the default red) and other boston sports teams.
It's a pretty straightforward punbb, but I have added personal messaging, clickable smilies on posting, and an integration to media wiki.
Caution: some of the threads may be NSFW.
Thanks.
Edit: Yeah, it would be helpful if I put the link, right?
Likes:
- fast
- variable not fixed width
- easy to read fonts
Maybe-could-be-better:
- design is a bit stark and flat. Could do with some more accenting (eg introducing a few more colours that are complementary to your core grey and red palette, using a gradient background image in some CSS elements, subtle shadow effects here and there etc). This can be done with no performance hit at all
- maybe also could use a (well chosen and fast, small compressed JPG, centred) redsox image (logo, player image etc) as the header background
- not so fond of forum width going 100% - maybe 96% to allow left and right to be set back from the page edge a bit would look a bit better
- announcement box doesn't stand out distinctively enough. Maybe give it a light grey border or something
- banner ad at the bottom would work better centred rather than left aligned
Likes:
- fast
- variable not fixed width
- easy to read fontsMaybe-could-be-better:
- design is a bit stark and flat. Could do with some more accenting (eg introducing a few more colours that are complementary to your core grey and red palette, using a gradient background image in some CSS elements, subtle shadow effects here and there etc). This can be done with no performance hit at all
- maybe also could use a (well chosen and fast, small compressed JPG, centred) redsox image (logo, player image etc) as the header background
- not so fond of forum width going 100% - maybe 96% to allow left and right to be set back from the page edge a bit would look a bit better
- announcement box doesn't stand out distinctively enough. Maybe give it a light grey border or something
- banner ad at the bottom would work better centred rather than left aligned
Good feedback. Thanks. I've done some of the easier (for me) suggestions here. I centered the banner, and I also fixed some of the colors which turned out to be inconsistent between IE and FF.
I do agree that it's rather flat, but I have a hard time adding subtle texture, partly because I don't what are good background or border image or styles, and partly becaue I'm slightly design impaired.
In the meantime, I added the WYSYG editor mod, which I think adds a lot of value to the users. They won't really need any BB Code at all, and it adds a lot of style elements many more than the one that I either did or would have had to have coded into the parser myself. It also makes managing smilies so much easier, because you can just drop them in the folder and it dynamically adds them to the list. It does slightly slow down the page, however, but I think my site is fast enough that its worth it.
Thanks again for the feedback and i always welcome more from anyone.
Cheers.
Hi again.
I do agree that it's rather flat, but I have a hard time adding subtle texture, partly because I don't what are good background or border image or styles, and partly becaue I'm slightly design impaired.
As someone who is also a little design impaired, I always find it useful to play around with one of the many punbb styles downloadable from punres.org.
One attractive style that could probably be adapted to your needs for example (ie it's primary colours are red) would be something like RedLife for PunBB 1.2: http://www.punres.org/viewtopic.php?id=3770 . Just dump the (rather large) header image, dump the crazy body background image, add your own header image and adapt the title font and size, and you have could another style option for your users.
Maybe also have a look at http://www.arsamania.ru/forum/ - a Russian fan site for British soccer team Arsenal. It is a very nicely styled punbb forum that is similar in concept to your Redsox site, and the Arsenal colours are even the same as the redsox ones. The developer adapted one of the VB style themes from punres to get his look, and it works well.
A final snippet: while the forum width has been reduced from 100%, the whole forum is still left aligned, so I now only see a space on the right-hand side only of the forum. The whole forum probably needs to be centred, or equal padding applied to both left and right of the main box containing the forum.
Agreed that a WYSIWYG editor mod makes a big difference to users, esp non-tech or casual ones. Pity they add weight though to the page. Which one did you use?
Hi again.
I do agree that it's rather flat, but I have a hard time adding subtle texture, partly because I don't what are good background or border image or styles, and partly becaue I'm slightly design impaired.
As someone who is also a little design impaired, I always find it useful to play around with one of the many punbb styles downloadable from punres.org.
One attractive style that could probably be adapted to your needs for example (ie it's primary colours are red) would be something like RedLife for PunBB 1.2: http://www.punres.org/viewtopic.php?id=3770 . Just dump the (rather large) header image, dump the crazy body background image, add your own header image and adapt the title font and size, and you have could another style option for your users.
Maybe also have a look at http://www.arsamania.ru/forum/ - a Russian fan site for British soccer team Arsenal. It is a very nicely styled punbb forum that is similar in concept to your Redsox site, and the Arsenal colours are even the same as the redsox ones. The developer adapted one of the VB style themes from punres to get his look, and it works well.
A final snippet: while the forum width has been reduced from 100%, the whole forum is still left aligned, so I now only see a space on the right-hand side only of the forum. The whole forum probably needs to be centred, or equal padding applied to both left and right of the main box containing the forum.
Agreed that a WYSIWYG editor mod makes a big difference to users, esp non-tech or casual ones. Pity they add weight though to the page. Which one did you use?
Thanks for those links. I liked that soccer site and I "borrowed" a lot (okay all) of it. So thanks to them, too. It looks so much nicer now!
I used this mod for the rich text:
http://punbb.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=16130
mostly because it was the first one I found and it was really simple to integrate. It works very well.
Likes:
- variable not fixed width
Yeah, it's good, but then it is necessary to change picture in header, so that it would look beautiful and well with any screen resolution. For this most simply make this picture from several parts.
On Arsamania I can't make width in %, because I'm lazy to paint the new header picture 
. But it's always in my TODO list
PS: Sorry for my English...
PunBB Forums → PunBB 1.2 show off → Any feedback please on my new forum
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