MyBB Community Forums

I've moderated a largish vBulletin board for a while, it's time I tried putting some admin ideas into practice. My first observation is that, after a few days of exploring MyBB, I'm pleased with what I've found.

If you'd like a quick read of my aims and objectives they're at http://scoof.com/showthread.php?tid=6

I've tried making it harder for cliques to build by removing Thread Ratings and disabling the reputation system. I've also suppressed the user invisibility mode by taking that checkbox out of the profile. The Buddy system isn't a problem because on MyBB nobody can see anyone's friends except their own, that's a big plus.

I have practically no graphics skills. Changing the site colour scheme is simple enough but bringing the buttons into line, much less creating my own, is outside my competence. All I've done is tinkered with the underlying dark blue to some extent.

supplemental: What's the post editor plugin which lets users click to get MyCode wrappers like I'm typing in at the moment? I've not seen one listed but this is one of the things I was looking for.

Why did you get rid of the navigation breadcrumb? It's annoying not having it.

Sheer ignorance, Tim. I can't see the site ever using second levels of forum nesting, the back button redisplays the forum index and the logo returns to the homepage. I felt the breadcrumb line was taking up real estate. That's why I shifted the site statistics to a footer hyperlink too and put Who's Online as a link from the menu.

I dislike the design, it seems so unstructured...
And I agree, the navigation breadcrumb is missing - I can't go to the upper forum once I clicked your showthread link - I have to go to the index (using the logo) and then to the forum.

And you need definately more content to get started.

I like the idea but the design seems like to fall apart .

I don't think preserving "real estate" is your concern considering probably 80% of your design is white space.

It just annoys people because as Lennart said, people can't go to the above forum without going back to the home page and your theory about using the back button doesn't work if they go directly to a thread from a link like what I just did when I clicked the link in your above post.

But hey, your choice.

The skin is extremely plain (a little overplain) and the images are choppy. I suggest you fix that.

That makes sense, Tim and Lennart. I've reverted the css to reinstate the navigation breadcrumb, I'll consider how to improve the look of it overnight. It needs the background bar to pick it off the white background, I'll fish around for where I tinkered it out of existence.

No problem Maybe you could just use a premade theme (ivgeo has some really nice ones) until you either get a custom one made or decide upon a nice design that you can make yourself.

(2009-09-08, 01:40 AM)TimB. Wrote: [ -> ]No problem Maybe you could just use a premade theme (ivgeo has some really nice ones) until you either get a custom one made or decide upon a nice design that you can make yourself.

What I'm aiming at is minimalist, single toned, flat. I often set Firefox for months at a time to ignore site colours and fonts so that the Internet takes on just that uniform appearance. I did look through all of the themes under Downloads here but nobody seems to have the same opinion. I've no problem with that but I do have a specific look in mind.

Having said which, Zash mentioned the scrubby nature of my buttons and images and those comments are obviously true. Short of taking an in-depth Gimp course I'm not sure I can do any better than I've managed.

Thanks for your advice, I'm quite aware that you have a better eye and more experience than I have and I'm grateful.