Site appearance

[Tannin]

Once upon a time this place was preparing itself to take up the slack when Storage Review closed, so we deliberately laid it out the exact same way so that people would feel at home.

Now SR continues and we have to forge our own identity. So maybe it's time to do something about the way the forums look. (I'm not talking about the front page here guys, just the nuts and bolts of the forum pages.)

I often find myself getting confused about what web site I am on. I open six or eight windows here and at SR and flick between them and it's hard to tell. Sure, I know it's just the phpBB defaults, but maybe we ought to do a little something to set ourselves apart. I'm not talking major changes, just small things to make Storage Forum look like Storage Forum.

Some ideas:

1: Colors. How hard would it be to loose the blue and white. Nothing garish, just a subtle change to some slightly different pastel shades.

(My 2c: green is restful, easier on the eye than blue. Red is intrusive, pink a dreadful color that God invented on an off day, yellow is too bright, grey too boring. But can we loose the blue?

2: Forum names. "Computers" is boring. What else could we call the "computers" forum which would be equally meaningful but more our own? And much as I love the Bar and Grille, that could be changed too. "The Lounge" perhaps? Or something else.

Opinions please, gentlemen.

[flagreen]

Bar & Grille = The Water Cooler?

Computers = PC Technology?

[flagreen]

Color = Green

[Mercutio]

Amber or Green on black. A nice, monospace font...

Gee that would feel like home. :)

[CougTek]

My eyes, Mercutio, what have they done to you for you to suggest such a terrible torture! :o You're unhuman.

[Handruin]

It's not exactly what everyone asked for, except that it is different...

Items changed:

Header template now has a border
Top menu items have been rearranged in a line
Logo has been removed and text used as a replacment
Bordering lines between cells have changed from white to black making the separation easier to notice.
Backgroud color has been changed from gray to a blue-gray
Blue title bar changed from blue to black


Let me know what you think,

-Doug

[GREMLIN]

I don't care much for the "lack of a logo" logo. I miss the logo. :(

[flagreen]

Wow I really like it Doug - Great Job!

[Handruin]

Wow I really like it Doug - Great Job!


The result of me staying home sick with nothing to do. ;)

[GREMLIN]

Lack of sleep is no excuse for not having a real logo. :excl:

[CougTek]

We need a logo. Period. The rest of the style modofications are welcomed. I don't mind if the logo won't be the same as the old one, but we need one. It's a kind of trademark. People need to see one, they will associate our site to some visual image.

Also, while I like grey, we need colors. I don't ask for spay of pink and yellow everywhere, just a nice set of colors that looks well when put together. Personally, I prefer dark tones and cold colors, exept for the area where there's a lot of text, where I favor light colors. One of the main reason I don't frequent Ars Technica much is that the green letters on black background make their article particularly hard to read. At least, that's what my eyes are telling me.

Doug, what have you cought again? You know you need to protect yourself when you become familiar with little lolitas. Beware, syphilis is supposed to be on the rise this year. ;-)

[Handruin]

We need a logo. Period. The rest of the style modofications are welcomed. I don't mind if the logo won't be the same as the old one, but we need one. It's a kind of trademark. People need to see one, they will associate our site to some visual image.

Also, while I like grey, we need colors. I don't ask for spay of pink and yellow everywhere, just a nice set of colors that looks well when put together. Personally, I prefer dark tones and cold colors, exept for the area where there's a lot of text, where I favor light colors. One of the main reason I don't frequent Ars Technica much is that the green letters on black background make their article particularly hard to read. At least, that's what my eyes are telling me.

Doug, what have you cought again? You know you need to protect yourself when you become familiar with little lolitas. Beware, syphilis is supposed to be on the rise this year. ;-)


I appreciate the feedback; I will be looking into more color changes when I have time to do so. It took me most of the day (I know, it’s sad) to figure out how to change the items you see now. The themes aren’t that complex; it’s just the time it takes to put all the pieces together was most of the day.

Regarding the logo, see that guy posting above named GREMLIN…start bugging him for a new logo and maybe we’ll get something going here. ;) He’s the one who made the original logo. I took it down because it didn’t fit into the new header. I agree we should have a logo to distinguish this site, perhaps gremlin could come up with a few more?

What have I caught? Lol, nothing related to little lolitas that’s for sure. :) Just a common cold and regular headache…the not so fun stuff.

How is it you know that syphilis is on the rise? ;)

[CougTek]

How is it you know that syphilis is on the rise? ;)

Heard it on the news, not from personal experience.

[flagreen]

I just turn to this thread and I see this - "How is it you know that syphilis is on the rise?". Now I am about to scroll up and try to learn how this topic could have possibly evolved into a discussion of venereal decease. This should be good. :lol:

[CougTek]

It's because of me again, I plead guilty. :roll:

[CougTek]

I like the style change now (the dark background behind the forum window). Just a suggestion ; the text "phpBB Created this page in 0.466796 seconds : 14 queries executed : GZIP compression enabled : Debug Mode" at the bottom of the page should be showed in white (or another very ligh color) to make it more readable.

[Handruin]

I like the style change now (the dark background behind the forum window). Just a suggestion ; the text "phpBB Created this page in 0.466796 seconds : 14 queries executed : GZIP compression enabled : Debug Mode" at the bottom of the page should be showed in white (or another very ligh color) to make it more readable.



Good point, but this may not even be there in the final release. It's more of a debug tool then for common use. I can remove it all together if you want. For right now it's good to use because I can see if the server is slowing down. The page generation times are fairly good at this server, but I like to keep an eye on it. Lemme see what i can do about changing the color.

-Doug

[GREMLIN]

I will create a new logo soon. :evil:

[timwhit]

The new site looks good. Definately distancing itself from SR, which is a good thing, IMHO.

-Tim

[Handruin]

The new site looks good. Definately distancing itself from SR, which is a good thing, IMHO.

-Tim


I'll be working on the gray colors soon in order to make this site more unique. I had a nice test site to try these changes on, but the HD loss killed the area51 site that I had converted. No loss to the members here just lost time. Now I have to recreate it again...I guess I can't have enough restoring practice. ;)

[Handruin]

What does everyone think of green?

http://www.storageforum.net/develop/area51/index.php

I'm not sold on it yet...but I'll keep trying. I think Tony wants pink, but I'm not sure why.

[Prof.Wizard]

That green is very good Handruin.

[flagreen]

I like that Green too. Better than this blue actually.

[Mercutio]

The green reminds me a bit of some of the early visual interdev sample materials; how the web looked in 1998 or so. Maybe with a darker foreground color?

How about green or amber on black as just an option?

[Prof.Wizard]

Actually make many and then launch a poll for us to choose... :wink:

Green is a calming and relaxing color. Psychology says so... Nature says so... :)

[timwhit]

Green is ugly, it hurts my eyes to look at that page. I would like to stick to colors that don't stand out that much.

Personanly, I like black with white characters. I find it to be easier on my eyes than white or other colors.

-Tim

[Tea]

It all comes down to mathematics.

Light background + dark text = eyestrain.

Single Webmaster + many different requests = stress

Pink background - contents of stomach = vomit