MyBB Community Forums

One nice thing about interface standardization is I can easily jump from site to site without remembering where the controls are. After awhile it becomes automatic, and it makes navigating a site very easy. This is mostly true for vBulletin sites because the control locations are rarely modified.

Now I am jumping from MyBB site to MyBB site and every place I go there is a different control layout. Sometimes key controls like New Posts and User CP are hidden away. So I have to read the whole menu and try to remember where the site owner put things.

Maybe I'm running into this because I am visiting sites whose topic is MyBB, and so the owner is heavily into modification. But it would be nice if there was a balance between the beauty of originality and the utility of standardization. This is the kind of balance you see when you get behind the wheel of an automobile. The main controls are in the same predictable place, no matter how exotic the car looks.

Anyway, I know I'm being a party pooper, and I'll probably take some heat for this -- but please give this some thought. Because standardization does not rule out modification. For example, you can have a bar menus with dropdowns, and still leave the main controls visible and in the same general screen location.

I can see where you are coming from and agree for the most part.

But most vb forums look the same, and that's boring. Because of the millions of forums out there now, owners have to come up with brilliant and unique designs to make them stand out!

What Tom said.

If every forum looked the same, life would be boring...or the web. Even the fact that every site uses the same div structure to build a layout makes the web boring.

But most vb forums look the same, and that's boring. Because of the millions of forums out there now, owners have to come up with brilliant and unique designs to make them stand out!

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My thoughts exactly...

You can have a nice theme without changing everything an insane amount. He's mostly talking about things like the User CP and stuff like that. Which I agree should be easy to access and navigate. Hence why he is asking for a middle ground...

Never did he say that templates shouldn't be modified at all.

Seems people can't win then; if everything's in the same place there's no originality (which is what some people complain about, all the themes are the same just with different CSS) but then even when you change the layout to something original, it's still wrong as people are used to the standard layout, even though that's boring and unoriginal, and you changed it to be more original...

I said nothing about wanting all sites to look the same. And I didn't say to emulate the sameness of vbulletin. What I suggested was a "balance between the beauty of originality and the utility of standardization." I really think my automobile analogy is clear enough to anyone who has ever visited or seen photos of a custom car show. People come up with incredible designs, but I can still get behind the wheel of most, and drive them without thinking.

As for Matt's comments on "can't win," I don't know how to solve that. It's frustrating. It is as if the default theme has become an unwelcome guest in our community, simply because it's default. So much so that even a color-only variation that creates a unique and different feel is not acceptable -- because the templates were never touched.

Frankly, I'd like to see color-only variations being applauded. And I also like the more elaborate mods. I just don't like a difficult interface.

(2011-02-20, 12:54 PM)MattRogowski Wrote: [ -> ]Seems people can't win then; if everything's in the same place there's no originality (which is what some people complain about, all the themes are the same just with different CSS) but then even when you change the layout to something original, it's still wrong as people are used to the standard layout, even though that's boring and unoriginal, and you changed it to be more original...

Not true, you can be original and still have good access to the primary buttons.
He is complaining that some MyBB forums have modified their templates in such a way these are hard to find ( at which point I'd also post a complaint requesting to make it easier to the eye ).

Oh I see, you mean if standard links are hidden with javascript or something??