Forum style

[greecysurf]

If it aint broke, do not fix it, i used to use ebay alot till they changed it, its bl**dy awful now, they did not listen to people telling them it was ok, tried to make it funky and knackered it. This is nice and easy. Agree about the smilies., one for Popeye as well.

[Phantom]

Oh there is, forum jump, select which section you want and go

Oh yeah 2 years and still not found me way around

[Guest]

OK I've put the signatures back on, have tried to limit it so that the pages don't get too long and will see how it goes.

With regard to the colours, personally I like it as it is - that being said I built it in those colours so maybe I would. I also run another site with white background and black writing but I find the blue background more restful on the eyes. One additional thing, while it is all built on CSS I have tried to integrate the look and feel of the rest of the site with the forum, if I change the forum will need to change the rest of the site which is a bit of a pain - will need to really build the site again and have as a development site so that I can experiment with what looks good and what doesn't.

As far as the patches are concerned, I will be bringing it up to date when time allows. I generally don't update with every patch as some of them only fix holes in finctionality we don't use. Current version is 3.8.3 and we are about 8 months behind.

[TobyJug]

nah it's fine.....

oh and the person who started this thread....

I just looked at the site in your sig and you know what....
It's similar colours...

so wtf are u on about.....


and I like the forum....

[RodLeach]

I like the forum but in fairness to the OP he's suggesting it could do with some minor 'tweaks'.


Fair comment on the colours. Its not to everyones tastes But it is easier on the eye than other colours.

Im sure it would benefit from a slight nip & tuck but what site wouldn't?!


Either way.. It's good to have some suggestions!! If it improves the site then it improves the site!!

[PDR]

OK I've put the signatures back on, have tried to limit it so that the pages don't get too long and will see how it goes.

With regard to the colours, personally I like it as it is - that being said I built it in those colours so maybe I would. I also run another site with white background and black writing but I find the blue background more restful on the eyes. One additional thing, while it is all built on CSS I have tried to integrate the look and feel of the rest of the site with the forum, if I change the forum will need to change the rest of the site which is a bit of a pain - will need to really build the site again and have as a development site so that I can experiment with what looks good and what doesn't.

As far as the patches are concerned, I will be bringing it up to date when time allows. I generally don't update with every patch as some of them only fix holes in finctionality we don't use. Current version is 3.8.3 and we are about 8 months behind.

Absolutely agree 100%

[Guest]

Rod.

No certainly wasn't having a go at Sam, all suggestions are good, my only concern is time, I run this and 3 other websites plus I'm building a Computer Aided Dispatch system for use by 4x4 Response and I reckon to have a few tweaks would take quite a time. the problem is when I set this up it probably took about 30-40 man hours to come up with the colours we have by fiddling a bit then a bit more and so on and I had a development server then. I don't have that anymore so any tweaks are on line and if they look horrible then it isn't nice for anyone. I am planning on building a development server at home and will clone the site across, can then do the customisations that to be honest I probably agree need to be done - the site has had little change in look and feel for about 5 years and things have moved on.

To be honest I'd love to move it across to a purpose built Content Management system as that would be a lot easier to keep up to date, unfortunately we would lose a lot of what makes this site great - the gallery etc just wouldn't move easily.

However when I have a dev server up and running I'll have a chat to Koi and maybe we'll come up with some good changes.

And just to show I'm not stuck in the past, have a look at http://www.gloucestershire4x4response.co.uk which is one of the other sites I built (using the Joomla CMS) and styled.

Mind you that might not be to everyone's taste either

Oh and sam, get you point about the proliferation of links caused by multiple menu bars, will get that sorted. unfortunately I built the menu bar when vBulletin didn't have all those things built in (the top menu bar is part of the wrapper file that the forum is enclosed in) and I just haven't got around (or bothered to be honest) to changing things. Good spot on that one, hadn't really noticed much either.

[RodLeach]

Wasn't suggesting you were having a go at Sam mate, I was suggesting Tobys "WTF are you on about" might have been a bit ott for someone just making some suggestions!



I appreciate you pour alot of time into the site mate an i wouldn't ask for many changes. Im not sure there is much here that bothers me! I didnt even notice the two links the the calender till Sam pointed it out!

[TobyJug]

Wasn't suggesting you were having a go at Sam mate, I was suggesting Tobys "WTF are you on about" might have been a bit ott for someone just making some suggestions!

Only said it because his own site is blue with a blue background.... lol
and he wants this one changing....

Not meant to be hard or rude like....

[MattF]

plus I'm building a Computer Aided Dispatch system for use by 4x4 Response

You can't just throw a teaser like that in with no further info. Details?

[RodLeach]

Only said it because his own site is blue with a blue background.... lol
and he wants this one changing....

Not meant to be hard or rude like....

I know mate..

[POPEYE]

What about me grin smiley tho?teeth:

[sam]

Only said it because his own site is blue with a blue background.... lol
and he wants this one changing....

Not meant to be hard or rude like....

I made some art you'll love. It's every colour that can/does appear on a forum page... gah i forgot red. My site really cant keep up with that!

I made the mock ups colour over grey because Surf's generally have colour over grey/silver, not as a statement against blue. Blue is fine, as i recall the most relaxing of all the colours. This place is about Surf's, so Surf's seemed a sensible place to look for ideas, thats all they were, as Lucky says, it does take a long time to make a finished scheme which was not what i was suggesting they were.

Lucky, i didn't realize the site and forum were quite so separate, i had assumed they at least shared a CSS. I think you are right, an off the shelf vbulletin CMS, given your time constraints would make it a heck of a lot easier to manage and maintain.

The newer forum does have a gallery, it isnt brilliant but it is at least all in one. Id be curious if you couldnt persuade coppermine to dump its images into it, it is possible to export the images from what i have read. This isn't ideal but it seems a workable way of importing, slightly labour intensive but better than loosing anything, also one less thing to maintain.

The videos you could stick on youtube, saves bandwidth, disk space, backups and advertises the site. Everything else is pretty much ready out of the box, aside from minor template tweaking for copyright etc.

Your deffinately on the right track with the other sites, they look current and active, this one just comes across as the ugly duckling of the group, it has all the right ingredients to become a Swan it just isn't quite their currently- little details like the wysiwyg editor trying to escape out of the side of the screen and so on.

[Dodge]

I know its rude to ask but plweeeeaaaaaasssseeee say someone else thinks it could use tweaking at least.
I mocked up a quick alternative as an idea, well, actually i tried a few colours.

Irrelevant of colour choice i think a key point is removing the intrusive navigation pane, you dont need two links to the calendar when you are looking at the forum (obvious example), 'contact us' three times, two different undistinguished FAQ links and so on . The banner provides ample space for a smaller more relevant and useful nav menu.

Anyways, thought it was worth consideration.

Both those colour schemes would give me a head ache.

Saying that I don't like the present colours either, I prefer a light background with black text, much easier on the eye.

[Guest]

You can't just throw a teaser like that in with no further info. Details?

Matt.

Have a look at http://openises.sourceforge.net/

I've installed it, written some integration code to make it work with a GPS tracking system, and am working helping the lead developer (Arnie) adding some functions - mind you my abilities are a long way behind his.

The package is called Tickets, is Open source and aimed at small volunteer EMS and other groups supporting them (just like 4x4 Response).

Sam.

Once I get the dev server built I'll try out some options to see what can be done, really don't want to do it live. Would love to transfer to something like Joomla as it would be a lot easier for Koi and I to manage, I know you can get a vB bridge for Joomla or possibly move across to phpBB which works well with Joomla. You can bridge Coppermine to Joomla too so maybe there is a chance to make it work. The only problem bit would be teh Members rigs section which I built myself from scratch and would find almost impossible to port across to anything else, only possibility would be maybe to build it as standalone and run in a Joomla frame.

Sorry, probably most other people have gone to sleep at this point.