New Forum Theme

river · May 6, 2014, 10:18pm

There was a thread recently on whether to change the forum software for PeercoinTalk, and I think it looks like it might not be worth the hassle.

So the best thing we can do might be to get a nicer theme, as Sentinelrv said:

[quote=“Sentinelrv, post:6, topic:1682”]I’d actually like it if we used the same colors as our subreddit, dark upper banner with the Peercoin logos, a white and gray background and some green mixed in. It would make our communities more consistent.

I’d actually like the same thing to be done with the website. Keep the current layout, but change the colors from blue to what we have on our subreddit.[/quote]

Also found a quote from FuzzyBear:

Request for Better Forum Software

Making the forum look like the Peercoin facebook and reddit etc pages… this is something that can and yes should be done. Its is just a “theme” modification. Again I will be honest the “theme” mods have been low on my list of things to look at, but there are other themes you can select and there was a request for a “dark theme” that I installed which works well when viewing at night. Themes can be custom written, or existing ones modded to our preference, and there is a “default” theme. All these are extra plugins I can install on the forum, but I have had a few issues installing some plugins as some cause others not to work or can’t be installed. There is some work I need to do here to clean up the forum as well but this again I have just not had the dedicated time to do, but is more of a priority before installing any new plugin features. But again do please feel free to browse around for SMF theme plugins and send me links to ones you link in this thread so we can all discuss them.

I did some searching for SMF forum themes, but I couldn’t seem to find anything that matches the Peercoin design. The main websites I found for themes were:

http://www.dzinerstudio.com/ (I think you have to pay for these ones)

I personally think a more minimalist, clean theme would look good, for example: Vertex …though obviously with a different color scheme.

So I think we might have to design a new one from scratch if we want it consistent with the Peercoin design. Does anyone have experience with creating these themes? If not, maybe we could have a bounty similar to the one currently for the Peerunity theme?

I realize that this is not an urgent matter and that everyone is busy, but if it is not too much work I think it will be worth it.

ppcman · May 6, 2014, 10:52pm

I like how you identified this is a non-urgent matter. I also like the way you presented it in your original post.

Since we’re on the subject of colors (which I agree, is the way to do), I think a brighter version is easier on the eyes than a dark blue version that you suggested.

In addition, brighter, gives the feeling of “new”, and “fresh”… like the sun in the early morning.

A1 Limon Portakal

http://custom.simplemachines.org/themes/index.php?action=download;lemma=2342;id=13597;image=thumb

Fuzzybear · May 7, 2014, 3:31pm

I added the theme Limon Portakal2.0_v1

I can see how I can make changes to it as well, just trying to work out best approach to do this, as yes looks like we should have our own custom theme… especially now we have afros!! O0 O0 O0 O0 O0 O0 O0

I’ll have a play with this when i get spare moments before bed as yes this is not top priority but we should be able to provide options for users to have 2-3 variety of themes they could chose from. You should each individually be able to set the theme for your user… i’m diging round trying to do this myself without automatically changing everyones theme, but i’ll write some guides once I have made some progress on this

Fuzzybear

river · February 18, 2015, 7:30pm

Bump.

I found a post on the dzinerstudio forum that gives an idea of what kind of price range to expect if we go down the custom theme route:

First off, custom designed themes are normally not affordable to the average forum owner as the price can range between $200 and $600 USD due to the tremendous amount of time and work that goes into unique, custom theme design. A custom logo and a desire to obtain psd files and/or copyright removal will normally add to the costs. I normally do not charge for copyright removal on designs more than $250 but that and the final price actually depends on the designer. In the end, a variation of a current theme is much more affordable for most ($30 t0 $70) with basic logo, no psd files.