MyBB Community Forums

The first impression many or most users take is from forum's default style and how easy it is to make the changes to the skin to suit our needs. When I first visited MyBB, I was targetting on getting a forum that has a good default layout and is easy to customize (skin wise), and has all the features I need and MyBB didn't strike as the perfect choice to me.

The other options I had: (free ones)

phpBB
The default style's awesome -- gives a real good feel, nicely set font sizes, good spacing, good gradients, nice icons etc. It's really easy to customize as well, but it lacked the features I needed - a major drawback!

SMF
Horrible default style -- makes me and most of my users feel too uncomfortable. It will take ages to get it to look the way I want and still the comfortable feeling won't just exist. Packed with good features, nice development team, not so easy to customize. I ditched it because of few obvious reasons.

IPB 1.3.1
Gives the good comfortable feel -- nice default layout. Fair enough, I was able to grasp how to customize it and comes with good features. The drawbacks include terrible performance on huge boards (I have done many customizations to reduce the load time including better usage of MySQL Indexes, a few algorithm changes etc.. ah well, that's off-topic.) And last but not the least, it's no more free so no updates! (I usually do the fixes myself, but still it's too boring to always keep coding -- although i am still doing it at one of my board)

MyBB
The default layout wasn't too good, but ok I found a nice template and guides on how to make it better. The template editing is very easy so customization is a piece of cake. I loved it's features esp. the RSS and custom plugins feature, so after some thought, I decided to use it.

Now the suggestion I would like to make, is to -- please -- work on the default layout. Many users are like me and the default layout is an important factor in judging which board software to use. The additional themes are based on the default layout a forum software presents (don't believe me? then checkout the themes section, don't they look similar to default layout?) ..

If you could pick up a graphics and styling team for MyBB, it would be really helpful .. I know, the teams working hard on the code, but design's also important.

Websites are not all about Graphics.

They are about Content, and message boards are about maintainability.

Websites that are too Graphically oriented to a long time to load on Dialup connections. I know because I have one.

The default style is fine for this version, however next version should feature I style rewrite if I'm not mistaken. Chris or the Development Team would have to comment on that.

It all comes down to opinions... IMO, I think MyBB has one of the best default skins... way better than vB, phpbb, and the free version of IPB...

And in my opinion, I think its kinda sad if you juged a forum software on its default theme... sure the noobs will go for what ever one they think looks cooler... but in the end, the one with the better software will win.

I like me the skin of MyBB, I think is more nice than vBulletin

tmhai Wrote:This has popped up on the MyBB 1.2 Beta Forums, and it has been confirmed that the default skin will not be changed, it is not one of Chris' main priorities. If I'm not mistaken, he did say that the next major theme change will occur with 2.0.

Peter did say:

Peter Wrote:I would like to make it my personal assignment to first semanticize MyBB's code before any designers touch it. When I'm done with it (either 1.4 or later Wink), you can all go CSS all the way IMO.

But your going to have to wait for Chris to tell you.

What dont you exactly (and be specific) like about the theme at the moment? I could make suggestions at the Beta Forums (note: ill only post touch-up suggestions), and Im hoping that after I finish school Ill get to work at improving the dafault layout and making it tableless, xhtml strict and css compliant (no promises). 2.0 wont be out for years to come (see wiki)

1) All our secrets are being leaked
2) You know that we (MyBB staff) do read both forums right?

Oops, sorry, the title can be changed to "a more attractive default skin". I didn't really wanted to say "more graphical", just better graphics. Addition of graphics at active users divion (on index) would help getting rid of that empty feel.

I am not sure what exactly is wrong about it (users don't really like the default one). It looks a bit empty (no, it's not the content I am talking about, too much of 'white' area).

Well, ok, drop the suggestion because I am not able to explain it well.

Being a minimalist, I like the default them as clean as possible, more graphics tend to make it cluttered in my eyes. Most people that are new to web design tend to toss in all kinds of unneeded graphics. I know I did in my early days.

Also, I don't know why I'm still credited in the admin cp as working on theme and graphics. My theme was lost when RC3 came out.

hehe, i changed the topic title ... I didn't really wanted to say more graphical ...

There's nothing wrong with the default skin, it's clean, easy on the eyes and generally tidy.

A lot of boards change the default skin as it is anyway, so it's not real big deal.

And the default skin loads fast, spaciali if you surf the forum with the PSP