What would you change in the layout?

[Shorty]

Ok.. Im up for taking suggestions on the overall layout of the forums ;)

/me buries head and waits for the mass PMs to start

Would ya like better buttons? What features would you like added? Would you make the tables wider? What don't ya like?

Im not taking requests on forum names or content (so save the "debate blah" ... )

Just visuals please :)

-Shorty (have templates, will modify)

[danball1976]

They seem fine to me

[edcentric]

Why are different posts various widths? I can live with it , but it looks funny.
Well, if you want me to get picky.....
-The smiles box is too wide. It squeezes the reply box.
-On a forum page (not the front or an index) the headers could be smaller. There are some pages where the first screen is only header and stickys.
-and don't be afraid to through a little more color in. I like the shade, but a little more variation might help liven up things

[Shorty]

Why are different posts various widths? I can live with it , but it looks funny.

Because some members post pictures that are larger than the post table. Only way to is to make the whole forum wider to suit (hence my asking the question :))

-The smiles box is too wide. It squeezes the reply box.

I can fix that.

-On a forum page (not the front or an index) the headers could be smaller. There are some pages where the first screen is only header and stickys.

Screenshot me an example with arrows or pointers.. so I can look into it :)

-and don't be afraid to through a little more color in. I like the shade, but a little more variation might help liven up things

Il see what I can do :)

[Rob]

The color scheme is very light and airy, but it just doesn't sit well. The more I see it, the more its just 'normal' but I was really taken off guard at first. Maybe some more contrasted colors as accents? I like the clean feel, but something just isnt clicking 100%

Maybe a different button set or table backgound here and there might shake it up a bit. Overall I'd say its very nice though.

Also, if you could shorten the main pages overall header 120-150px it would probably streamline a bit more. As it sits, it feels somewhat blocky and almost intrusive at first. Just a slight squeeze in a few areas might give it a new 'feel'

[Shorty]

The buttons are a fair suggestion. I know they suck.. but I have some time to do better ones. Any ideas anyone for a better button?? ;)

Il remove the cell padding and move the header up.. and streamline it. I have a new graphic that is more practical as well. Also.. Im gonna streamline and make the welcome bit smaller as well :)

[Rob]

Heh, so I'm not alone in my observasion. Also, I think a new button package might shift the color contrast enough to add some taste, depending on what you do. but as it sits, its still a nice design.

[Shorty]

Rob.. I made them in 15 minutes :o They are the standard VBulletin buttons with a colour flood ;)

Im gonna have a play around and get make something better :) later

[mmonnin]

:rolleyes: coloUr :rolleyes:

The text on the buttons looks fuzzy, kinda blurry.

[Shorty]

mmonnin said
:rolleyes: coloUr :rolleyes:

The text on the buttons looks fuzzy, kinda blurry.

You spell it "color".. the British spell it "colour". Deal with it :p

Il do something with the buttons! .. Im getting the hint here!

[maxanon]

I like the clean look. Very minimalist.

I find that there's a lot of blank space. If you want to put ads later, then they're probably required, however left justifying the tables may be a good idea.

I agree with mmonnin that the text is fuzzy on the buttons.

I don't know what other colours could be added so that it doesn't look to gaudy.

Just curious, is there a limit on the vertical length of sigs?

[Lincoln]

teh smilies, teh smilies!! :p

- add teh ones on the page I made and linked you to
- rearrange the ones you have, so that the "normal" size ones are the only ones that appear next to the post reply box. The jawdrop and happy birthday specifically need to get moved down the list a ways.

[mmonnin]

Yeah I liked how neat it was before too. And do they all have to be the plain yellow ones? Like the green rolleyes one.

[GHoosdum]

I think we need a laughing smilie again.

And the color scheme, IMHO, is great. Much better than icrontic. New or old. I like the lightness we get over here. Feels less oppressive.

[MarkTAW]

I agree that the header graphics are too wide - My monitor is 1152 x 864 but I keep my browser at 800 x 600 so I can have several on the desktop at once and because I design sites and want to know what they look like at that resolution. The header images scroll off both the right and bottom of my browser. Then again, that may be the old "learned when many monitors were 640 x 480" fuddy duddy in me. For a site dedicated to computer tweakers, I'm prolly in the minority.

The same with the crazy overly-wide sig's. Maybe changing the table width to 98% or something would help alleviate it all around.

I like the color scheme, it says "I'm at Short Media." It's definately not the corporate "dark primary colors and white" that define nearly every other site on the web.

[LawnMM]

More nudity! Just kidding...well, maybe? Hehe. Nah, its all good shortman. I dunno how it could really get any better...forums are slammin at this point.

[Shorty]

I know they aren't as "pwetty" as some other forums out there.. but these are built for speed! :D

[Cyclonite]

I think it's great, shorty. You did a wonderful job!

[tycho]

i think that mostly everything looks great here
i agree that the text on the buttons gets fuzzy, but i could live with it.

How about a preview reply button for the reply box at the bottom of a thread... as it stands you have to click Post Reply in order to have the button to preview it before you post.


Keep up the good work shorty! :thumbsup:

[muddocktor]

Yeah, I got spoiled to having the preview button there for the quick reply box at the bottom of the thread at the old Icrontic. A lot of times I'll start something in it and then decide I want to change or attach something and hitting preview would pop you into regular reply mode.

[Black Hawk]

Don't know if this has been mentioned (haven't read the whole thread), but a dark theme would be really good. After a few hrs the white is pretty hard on my eyes even after turning down the contrast on the montior. I know you guys don't want to look like Icrontic but a dark blue is the best choice. Maybe a dark gray with a white font.

[mmonnin]

Submit one. I think anyone is welcome to make a theme.

[Black Hawk]

http://www.templeofchaos.com/~blackhawk/smilies/shocking.gif Umm....err...... http://www.templeofchaos.com/~blackhawk/smilies/bolt.gif

[Shorty]

mmonnin said
Submit one. I think anyone is welcome to make a theme.

Sure they can submit a colour scheme :)

[Cyclonite]

Is there a template available?

[Shorty]

Trekky8472 said
Is there a template available?

Vbulletin runs almost entirely off templates to build the pages. At last standing there were 450+ templates in this scheme :eek: .. so err. no template really available for the HTML. They are all in the admin backend...

however...

I can do a list of the colours scheme options and the current colour codes :) .. if someone has some alternative colours to submit.. then il make a duplicate style (templates/replacements) and change the colours in that style.. as a try out ;)

[Khaos]

Hey Shortstuff, here's a real simple request that I think we can all agree on.

When you click the big ShortMedia logo at the top of the page, it goes back to the forum index... But there is a link right below it that does the same thing. However, to get back to the main S-M site, you have to type it in manually, go to a shortcut, or scroll allllll the way to the bottom of the browser window. If you don't go to the bottom or manually open a new window, you lose your place in the forums. Why not make the big S-M logo open www.short-media.com in a _blank?

Alternatively, there could be a 'home' button in the top row of buttons that I recommended could provide navigation of the rest of the site from the forums.

[Shorty]

Khaos :D

The parse error will be fixed shortly ;) the frontpage will work.

Im gonna replicate the header and menu structure from the frontpage onto the forums header. So effectively.. the two sites will link pretty smoothly :)

I should be able to figure that out before the end of the weekend :)

[Kwitko]

That was my bad on the parse error. I'm trying to redo the logic for the top 10 posts, so sorry about that. The stray bracket has been found and punished. He's not allowed out of his room for the weekend.

[Khaos]

TD, don't be too apologetic, you've got to let go of some of that hatred for braces, man. Don't bottle it up inside, that's how things get broken (I watch my Incredible Hulk).

Listen dude... I'm a contributing developer on a 250,000 line C++ open-source project know as eMule, I KNOW what it can be like to find stray braces. ;) You don't have to apologize for it, it happens to everyone. For your sake, I hope PHP debuggers have improved a bit since the last time I used it. Man that was horrid, it would just be like, "FATAL ERROR! FATAL ERROR! PHP has detected that somewhere, somehow you fUxed something up." And that was the end of it. Even worse, sometimes it would supply random, WRONG information about the error or just nonsensical crap that didn't mean anything. God almighty.

Shorty -

I like the graphic that is currently over the forums better than the one that is currently over the main page. If it was my call, I would keep the lines around "ShortMedia" going off the side. It would look better if the image was left justified with no margins, like the current graphic on the main page is.

[MarkTAW]

I know I'm a fuddy duddy, but this kind of thing bothers me.

[Shorty]

Mark.. never seen that before .. ouch :banghead:

What resolution is that?

Khaos... Ive got quite a few changes to make in next few weeks.. but Im holding off. I just got Vbulletin 3 final beta. I want to concentrate efforts on that.. so when the gold code is released, that will contain all the changes :) I will do some cosmetics though, in the meantime.

[Red Dawn]

In the last post section where all the forums are listed the last post thread and last poster don't match up when there are sub-forums in that section. i.e it displays the last thread posted only from the main forum but the last poster can be from the sub-forum. gets kinda confusing when u click go to last post which appears to be 1 thread but u end up in another, if u know what i mean cause i'm confusing myself now

[danball1976]

Shorty said
Mark.. never seen that before .. ouch :banghead:

What resolution is that?

Khaos... Ive got quite a few changes to make in next few weeks.. but Im holding off. I just got Vbulletin 3 final beta. I want to concentrate efforts on that.. so when the gold code is released, that will contain all the changes :) I will do some cosmetics though, in the meantime.

The picture is 800x700, so hes probably at 1024x768

[Trinity]

Shorty

Just incase you forgot the buttons need doing :D

Trin xx

[Spinner]

Trinity said
Shorty

Just incase you forgot the buttons need doing :D

Trin xx

LOL;D

Sorry that just made me laugh. Don't let her boss you around mate. But she's right, they do need doing.;)

My only gripe with the main page is the positioning of the 'sarcnet industries' ad. I think it needs to be lowered slightly to sit just below the 'Featured Reviews' header level. Something along the lines of what it looks like below.

[EQuito]

Shorty said
Because some members post pictures that are larger than the post table. Only way to is to make the whole forum wider to suit...
If you don't mind me saying so, make the forums wider then. After all, there is one inch of wasted space on each side.
Or you could limit the width of attachments to the width of the forums which could use a splash of color btw... :D

Just my 2 cents. Cheers!

[Spinner]

I'm no coder, and I have no idea of what the limitations are with vBulletin, but with regard to the whole attached picture size thing, would it not be possible to encorporate some sort of intelligent resize into the displaying of attached images, sort of like what IE6 has built in. So it resizes the picture to suit the window size. Or would that just be too much trouble than it's worth?

Just an idea/query.

[Tropical]

Everything is cool expect for two things...the ratings and quotes. The rating system needs to go because most people don't use it and if they do is just one or two people, also i think the pages would run faster without it. I really liked the old icrontic quotes because they were nice and simple.

[primesuspect]

Yeah, what the hell is the rating system? I have never used it once ever, in fact, I didn't even see it until I read Tropical's post...

[mmonnin]

OMG prime.:rolleyes:

Not really a layout change but where the hell is the rockon smilie. I was PMing seversphere and I said it and realized we dont have it anymore. Its a must have!!!

[primesuspect]

Diabx0r MUST have the rockon smiley. He used it all the time :)

[Khaos]

I think that the name cell is kinda weird looking now. If everything is going to be centered, then perhaps the location should be moved up under the custom title. Right now it looks kinda goofy when people have an avatar. This should be a template issue so the change would carry over to the new vB.

Something that's not a template issue is the display of "Location" even when there is no value for it or just blank spaces... There's no reason to just have "Location: " there, it's messy. Hopefully that'll get fixed in the new vB, but if not, I'm noting it here.

Dassall ;)

[Khaos]

Tropical said
Everything is cool expect for two things...the ratings and quotes. The rating system needs to go because most people don't use it and if they do is just one or two people, also i think the pages would run faster without it. I really liked the old icrontic quotes because they were nice and simple.
You can still quote Icrontic style, I'm not sure what you're complaining about. The checkboxes just let you quote multiple posts at once, which is AWESOME... IMHO.

[Spinner]

Also, just a tiny thing, but if I'm not mistaken the dynamic code as displayed below for the mainpage top menus, doesn't preload the mouse over images when the page is intially loaded. It only loads the images after you have rolled your mouse pointer over the links, which results in a short delay before the roll over image is displayed.

[Bad_Karma]

Is there a way to increase the speed one can post. :) It would help out in the babe thread. If it's to counter-act spam then I'll live with it.

[Shorty]

Spam and also load :)

///Adjusted to 15 seconds/// :)

[WuGgaRoO]

how about putting up the total amount ppl have posted next to their avatar

[Necropolis]

WuGgaRoO said
how about putting up the total amount ppl have posted next to their avatar

This isnt going to happen. Its not really needed and saves on database hits. I am sure when Shorty see's this he can give a better explaination than I can.

[WuGgaRoO]

awwww shcucks :(

[Necropolis]

If you think about it, its not much more than a status thing anyway. If you really have to see how many post's someone has done, click on their profile button. I think its better without myself, some people post for postings sake just to get their post count up, nothing more. Whats the point of doing it if no-one can see it ;)

[Shorty]

The reasons for post count removal are simple. It saves two queries per post to the database. Removing registration date also saves a query :)

These are my previous posts actually ;)...

http://short-media.com/forum/showthread.php?postid=455#post455

http://short-media.com/forum/showthread.php?postid=606#post606

Both explain pretty much the same. Post count is of no real consequence or value. It doesn't matter how many posts you got or how long you have been registered for. You are based purely on the way you communicate with others on these boards :)

[GHoosdum]

Shorty said
Both explain pretty much the same. Post count is of no real consequence or value. It doesn't matter how many posts you got or how long you have been registered for. You are based purely on the way you communicate with others on these boards :)

Well said, Shorty! :cheers:

[MarkTAW]

True... You can post idiot responses A LOT and have more posts than someone who posts a few intelligent, insightful things.

[mmonnin]

On the forum index the "Posts" and "Threads" column do not line up all the way down. The forums line up in each group but each group of forums is different.

[Shorty]

mmonnin said
On the forum index the "Posts" and "Threads" column do not line up all the way down. The forums line up in each group but each group of forums is different.

Can't fix that. Have tried. Will continue to find a fix somehow.