This forum has been around for almost 5 years. Don't you think it's time for a change?

It's plain, not that easy to navigate in, and quite frankly it doesn't please your eyes. We want more members, right? Then we should make our forums more pleasing!

My thoughts are these.

We;

-Change the theme of the forums.
There are hundreds of different themes out there, ones that look a lot more organised and make the site feel friendlier.

-Create a new Banner.
The Banner's been here for quite a while, and honestly it isn't that nice. A block of colour, some glowing font, a lens flare, not that nice.
A new Banner would make the presentation of the forums seem a lot cleaner.

-Change the pictures that represent forums sections with more detailed, cleaner ones.

Take this for example. The font is plain and boring. The Art looks like something out of a schoolboy's presentation.
We really need new graphics to catch the eye.

With these new changes, I'm sure it will seem a hell of a lot more attractive to potential newbies.

That's all. Your thoughts?

-- Fri Jun 22, 2012 9:29 pm --

Example of what our Forum could look like, if done properly.

https://www.imvumafias.org/community/viewtopic.php?f=87&t=8305

https://www.imvumafias.org/community/viewtopic.php?f=87&t=8306
I asked Don,if we need new forum ikons,he said no.I can make some.Even buttons..

-- Sat Jun 23, 2012 1:43 am --

I think we should just change from PHPbb all together and go to mybb, mybb is an amazing free option ant the customization options are limitless.

Also, a new site look, better graphics (Current ones look noobish), just a whole site overhaul is necessary. A day or 2 down for maintenance would be well deserved.

That icon is going to give me seizures. >.<

The forum theme is not 5 years old, this forum theme was put in place back in October of 2010 when we switched from phpbb2.0 to phpbb3.0
The original forums theme from 2007-2009 was a black and teal tron style with other neon colors mixed in...setup by me.
From 2009 - mid 2010 it was classic blue, setup by Padrino Falcon when he became Don.
Then we switched to glass blue when we upgraded from phpbb2.0 to phpbb3.0, right after Sam became Don.

Now, the theme for the outside pages of the site is a decade old and we are thinking about changing that a bit, but the forums theme is practically brand new. I feel like we finally just finished parts of it. Personally, I do not feel like spending another 1.5 years re-skinning it all over again and running month long contests to get images that the community agrees on...again.

We use phpbb because IMVU uses phpbb. Our targeted audience is IMVU users, so we have to use something they already know how to use. (phpbb) It is simply easier to clone IMVu's systems if you are using the same script as they are.

The banner matches the current theme perfectly and we held a contest to decide on that banner; there were many entries. Sure, we could fund another contest to see if we get something better, but the current graphic contests that are up only have 1 person entering art... (good art, but still not enough to hold an actual contest). If it makes people feel better though, I can see about touching up the current banner to make it look a little more interesting.

The icons we are not touching. Those are too new and the community put a ton of work into those. They have already changed them 3 times to become "cleaner and more detailed". I am not touching them again, because someone else is just going to complain about them. On top of that, if we make them too detailed they will just look cluttered and may even cause the site to load slowly. They are icons, they are suppose to be clean and simple. Now, if someone can prove otherwise that they can follow the site theme and make some clean detailed icons, we might hold some votes and see about replacing some of them.

That example picture looks just like our own board in terms of layout, except the example is less detailed than our own board and does not have to squish all of the content that our board has onto a single index page. I do not see the difference.

I agree with Don Von. When I joined the forum, it looked noobie and the theme was changed to the current theme an year ago. I like how it looks and how it works and really don't want it to change anymore, well atleast for now.

I liek to forum the way it is. It is simple and easy to navigate for me . The banners are fine the way they are but if there is a need for improvement i will volunteer to make some banners.

I personally agree with some of the points on the icons and layout. There's just parts of the site that need to be codded properly. IE: things centered and laid out better.


This is a clean up design I did for the outside pages a while ago:

All right, it seems the vast majority of you like the current one, it was just an idea lol :3

I'm not saying anything bad against you, Don, as I could only dream of coding like you. The thing is, there are a lot of people out there that spend like 90% of their time coding extravagant, colourful themes. It might just look better. But if it's a bother, there's no problem.

Yes, that would be the outside of our site which I would like to find the time to clean up too.

Rain wrote:

I'm not saying anything bad against you, Don, as I could only dream of coding like you. The thing is, there are a lot of people out there that spend like 90% of their time coding extravagant, colourful themes. It might just look better. But if it's a bother, there's no problem.

As much as your flattery makes me smile, I am a scientist and not an artist. 90% of my time is spent adding functionality while 10% is spent simply making the images match / running contests to get the community to make the images for us. Give me a link to the example forum you posted and I will take a look at it to see if there is anything quick and easy we might be able to carry over code-wise / image touch-ups to add a little pizzazz.

Don Von Free Credits wrote:

@Ð▪ℳ

Yes, that would be the outside of our site which I would like to find the time to clean up too.

Yes, but I've mentioned a lot of in site stuff too that I would like to see get updated. I wish I was capable of doing it so you didn't need to.

I do think the index page could do with some work and I actually like the theme Rain posted. If it was re colored to blue and black I think it would be awesome.

Then again, I'm OCD so you know how that goes..