Forum De-defaultification

[Xaearth]

Ok House T. Looks like I'm gonna be working on making this place seem a bit more homely instead of a nice concrete refugee center. :D

So here's what I need from all of you:
1) Images - The more images we can salvage from the old House T, the less you have to suffer the wrath of my horrible editing skills. Also people willing to volunteer the time to making new images would be appreciated. (I'll try to remember to look up the image sizes later)

2) Suggested colors/themes - Ultimately, what I come up with is what you're gonna be staring at when you visit House T, so if there's certain colors/themes you'd like to see, feel free to suggest them.
I'm hoping to find at least 3 nice looking forum styles, so suggestions are welcome, but, depending on other user preferences and time constraints, may not all be used.

3) Extra Functionality (?) - While this would be the last thing to get looked at, keep in mind that the forums can have snippets of code appended in places to add things that normally aren't available. That includes pretty much anything from as simple as a basic calculator to as complex as keeping a running count of the number of times squirrels and/or goats are mentioned on the forums. As I have not been specifically charged with such a task as poking the forums with random bits of code, any and all of these ideas would have to be run by Jules and/or Coldin for approval before I (or anyone else) would think about digging around to find some way to implement it.

So feel free to reply with any ideas you might have to make the forums here a little less... blah ;).

Thanks,
~X

[Jules]

I had a copy of the banner that I snagged from the free guildportal site and loaded onto the main page. I think I have have already uploaded it to the ftp site. If anyone needs ftp access to upload images and stuff - let me know & I can create an ftp account for you.

Jules

[Coldin]

Well, I prefer lighter colored themes generally.

Actually, something like this (http://www.dndonlinegames.com/cmps_index.php) would be nice. Course, I really liked the Parchment style back at the old House T. But since all I have is my memory to go off of, I doubt it could really be recreated.

As for image files, that one banner is all I've been able to salvage.

[Yeti]

I can make new banners if needed...though I am not that sure since the old types of banners aren't my style...

[Jundak]

Personally, I'm into the darker side of life...so the DDO site clone was what I used at the old site. Ya know...black and deep reds with the old banner displayed prominantly across the top.

[Rommalb]

I think that was Changeling which was what I preferred too. white can work, but for something like DDO you need Black

[Xaearth]

Update:

The first non-default forum style choice is now available! :D
Cold Stone - a stony color scheme inspired by Coldin's link.

To select this style, either chose it from the dropdown menu on the bottom left side of the page. The default will remain... well... the default :rolleyes:, at least until more choices are available at which point in time we'll put it up to a vote which one should be set to default.

If you have any ideas or suggestions to improve this new style or ideas for other new styles, feel free to post them.

Note: Forum images remain unchanged. They will be updated in the future once... well... we have new ones to replace the defaults with :o.

PS: If I can get my hands on the parchment texture background/coding, I can implement that. I'll see if I can find somethin around the net later in the week, but until then, *shrug* it's kinda like that link Coldin posted... ok mebbe not, but it's what ya got :p.

[Tiblorian]

Greyish-blues on white with black text imo. Or some sort of tanish patchment with black text like before.

[Coldin]

Ah, this is much better. Not nearly so bright as the white. Maybe not quite the same as the site I linked to, but better than the default. Thanks Xaearth :)

[Jules]

I've been hunting around the vbulletin community and saw this. Like the layout, but not the color - let me know if you want me to upload it so it can be modified.

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=158172
demo below
http://www.vbmode.com/demo/?styleid=11

The color options in these are great:
http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=134092
demos below
http://www.freevbulletintemplates.org/forum/index.php?styleid=33
http://www.freevbulletintemplates.org/forum/index.php?styleid=32
http://www.freevbulletintemplates.org/forum/index.php?styleid=34

As I find more I like I'll post them.

Jules

[Xaearth]

I've been hunting around the vbulletin community and saw this. Like the layout, but not the color - let me know if you want me to upload it so it can be modified.

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=158172
demo below
http://www.vbmode.com/demo/?styleid=11

Agree that the color is... not too appealing :eek:. If ya like the layout, sure go ahead and I'll see what I can do with it.

The color options in these are great:
http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=134092
demos below
http://www.freevbulletintemplates.org/forum/index.php?styleid=33
http://www.freevbulletintemplates.org/forum/index.php?styleid=32
http://www.freevbulletintemplates.org/forum/index.php?styleid=34


As far as these go... That much of one color is a lil bit overkill imo. If you mean you like the way the colors are gradient (the color varies from strong to weak/light), I poked around a bit to see how exactly vB was doing that with their default, and it seemed the way they did it was applying an image as the color, which, can be done of course, but makes a bit more work (did I mention I'm horrible with fabricating/editing images? :D). Now, if there's a specific code they're applying to an otherwise normal color there (such that we could easily change the colors being used without having to engineer a new color image), that would be interesting, otherwise... not so much.

[Coldin]

I'm getting a little better at photoshop actually. So if we need to make some kind of generic image, I might be able to manage creating it.

[Coldin]

Might want to take a look at this too Xaearth. http://web.archive.org/web/20070829133352/http://www.housetharashk.com/forums/

I believe that's what most people remember and prefered from the old site.

And it would nice if the little DDO orbs before forums could be re-implemented. The darkened ones are forums that have been read, with normal orbs being unread. I'm not really sure if you can find the normal orbs anymore though.

[Jundak]

Might want to take a look at this too Xaearth. http://web.archive.org/web/20070829133352/http://www.housetharashk.com/forums/


That brought a tear to my eye. :(

Bastard. :mad: :D

[Xaearth]

That brought a tear to my eye. :(

Bastard. :mad: :D

Dun worry, House T shall soon return to its former glory! ;)

And cool Coldin, I'll see what I can do to reverse engineer a "normal orb"

[Coldin]

Actually...all the icons are down at the bottom.

It seems to be missing something to me. But maybe that's my imagination, and more of my comparison to the Parchment style.

[Xaearth]

Actually...all the icons are down at the bottom.

It seems to be missing something to me. But maybe that's my imagination, and more of my comparison to the Parchment style.

Ah wierd, didn't load for me until I refreshed a couple times. Well, this is good then :).

[Jules]

Agree that the color is... not too appealing :eek:. If ya like the layout, sure go ahead and I'll see what I can do with it.



As far as these go... That much of one color is a lil bit overkill imo. If you mean you like the way the colors are gradient (the color varies from strong to weak/light), I poked around a bit to see how exactly vB was doing that with their default, and it seemed the way they did it was applying an image as the color, which, can be done of course, but makes a bit more work (did I mention I'm horrible with fabricating/editing images? :D). Now, if there's a specific code they're applying to an otherwise normal color there (such that we could easily change the colors being used without having to engineer a new color image), that would be interesting, otherwise... not so much.

I'll upload 2 and you can play with them for something unique for us :)

Jules

[Jules]

Xaearth your e-mail address has been added as allowed to access vbulletin's communities going to send the license number in case you need it in a pm

Jules

[Xaearth]

Xaearth your e-mail address has been added as allowed to access vbulletin's communities going to send the license number in case you need it in a pm

Jules

Cool, and ty.

My next mission is gonna be to get the DDO-clone-ish color scheme that was requested earlier into a style. In the meantime I'll check out the styles you'll upload and poke around for something like the parchment style back on House T :). Also gonna familiarize myself with the default templates so, a lil down the road, I'll be able to code in a bit more customization (right now I'm just playing around with text input to change settings, dun wanna touch the coding till I'm sure what most of it does :D)

[Jules]

this one looks really really cool
Welll (http://www.bluepearl-design.com/forums/) that didn't link properly. Try this instead http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=144811 you have to click on the link in the forum.

its a bit dark but the layout and icons are nice

Jules

[Xaearth]

Ok. After spending the last couple days doing some guild site maintenance and trying not to cough up a lung :rolleyes:, gonna get back to some style building.

I saw the new Darkness style. While I could make some changes, it's fairly heavily customized, so any further changes to it (other than image replacement) would take a fair bit of time. My question is, does this style take care of those looking for a dark color scheme, or are there still wishes for a black-ish ddo forum style clone?

[Coldin]

I was searching the internet to see if I might come across the old Parchment style and I found this in google image search.

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p244/Coldin_photo/TharashkParchment.jpg

Couldn't grab the actual image since it's gone, but maybe it's something to go off of.