Hello, Starbounders! As you can see, we've got a nice forum theme up and running. However, a forum theme is a lot of work, and there may be bugs/glitches and/or other issues. If you find any of these, please send a PM to Zolgor, our artist who designed this wonderful thing. Please be sure to include what Web Browser you are using and take a screenshot of the bug if possible. Otherwise, feel free to vote on the poll about what you think of the new theme! If you mark 5 or below, please post on what could be improved. Thanks! EDIT: Oops, forgot to mention the style selector. Zolgor got it, though. Just look for "Digital Space" and click that to change themes.
First to vote, hit new post and blew out my sphincter. Thanks Kaz! Edit: Would it be possible to bring back the new posts button? I like to spam it.
Oh man, I just refreshed my browser and thought I was on another website! It'll take a while to get used to since I liked the simple theme the old forums had.
Hello everyone. I'd also point out that if you for whatever reason do not enjoy the new theme at all, feel free to change it back to the default one. The skin selector is available at the footer of the forums.
DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYUM Edit: Damnit, now I have to make the sprite in my sig transparent
I mistakenly overlooked the importance of the sub-navigation menu so I'll definitely integrate all of those links in the coming days. Thanks for the compliments, everyone. It's a great feeling to see my work appreciated. Also, thanks to Kazyyk the man himself and the other admins too for their patience with me and being very helpful with testing the theme.
It looks nice, but I can't seem to find the button to mark all posts as read. I find the theme a little dark too- but that is just my personal preference. Overall, it looks nice, I'll just have to get used to finding all the buttons and things.
Thanks for the feedback! If the theme doesn't suit your tastes you can just switch it back to the default one. However, for the missing buttons in the sub-menu, I'll refer you to this snippet of my last post.
DISCLAIMER: I am going to be incredibly nitpicky and split many hairs. I hate when I get feedback that doesn't describe any fault, because I know full well my work is never perfect. That being said, I am not insisting you make any of these changes either. My hyper-critical eye is caught by these things, but you can totally ignore me/justify your creative reasoning. Also I am a little blue/yellow colourblind. I enhance my monitor clour balance to counter a lot of it, but I just wanted to add another grain of salt. With that said... With the search bar detached while the inbox, etc is attached to the top of the page it just throws me off. The things I would try to see if they look good are combining the inbox bit with the search bar (so on larger window on one side) though that might make the balance weird. Doing the connecting bit with the search bar too might help, but I imagine you tried that already and didn't like it. Last, you could bump the banner down a bit lower so that those panels were on a flat black background. It should make them less of a distracting as they would be out of the way of the banner (the theory here is that if I am looking for the banner, I see the inbox and search bar which can be a good thing, but it also has a very high colour contrast to said banner and it makes them distracting) The new colours for the posts I think is amazing, anything that adds less white is great in my book. I like the theme of the banner, but a couple things caught my eye. The "O" in Starbound is considerably darker than the rest of the word. The outer glow on the planets are pretty harsh as well. The large planet's I think is okay, but in my perfect world the other two fade out more smoothly. I get that they can kind of represent the layer of the atmosphere, but it is a little too noticeable. I don't remember if the original theme had the same donate and apply buttons, but they are absolutely perfect. Colour contrast is there, placement is absolutely ideal, and they are aesthetically pleasing. Part of me likes how the frame for the forum avatar points at the post. The other part wonders if it could look better if the post did it instead. The Tweet hyperlink at the bottom is kind of hard to see now. If that matters too you, you might want to move it or change the colour. Personal opinion again, the mouseover for hyperlinks could use black font or have a darker background. As it stands it is hard for me to read (could just be my eyeballs). I agree with LeD above that the top right box looks off in its spacing. I would try to either increase the point of the name, find a way to separate it from the other stuff, or simply move them further apart. For a closing, I do really like it, so don't let me fool you. Everything that I didn't mention is a good thing, because it fit so naturally I didn't think to even critique it. I know the immense amount of work that goes into forum themes, so thank you for putting this together. This website is where people are getting their first impressions of the server, and with this edit it leaves on hell of a good impression. The site definitely looks a mile more professional, and every improvement done here makes the server seem like a more desirable place. Edit: I just noticed that the "post reply" button is a different colour than the others, and changes on mouseover. They looked the same to me until I hit it XD. That's bloody brilliant, keep up the amazing work mate! Edit edit: The icons in the forum navigation are also AMAZING! Hit me right in the oooooohh baby button, we all have those right?
I've got to say It's very humbling to see such fine work put into a community like this, compared to the simpler layout/scheme the new version blows it out of the water within proportions I cannot put into words. While it has it's own subtle flaws it maintains a healthy balance of both appealingly styalized and neat, making it easy on the eyes. Keep up the good work gentlemen, I very much look forward to seeing future improvments.
Me Likey this new theme. Seems alot cooler. :3 I mostly would have to agree with Sermane on a couple of points, but I think this is overall a wonderful change.
Thanks for the constructive & concise criticism and also the praise, Sermane. I'll try and respond to some of your points below. I definitely do not ignore reasonable criticism neither do I make excuses for my errors so you can rest assured your opinion will be taken into account. I never actually considered combining the two as I was worried about the balance it never even occurred to me, but I'll try to explore such possibilities in the future since I can see that working in some ways. Thanks for the suggestion! I agree that the atmosphere layer might be too thick on smaller planets and that the "o" appears darker. I have all the editable files available and I'll straighten those errors up when I get back to updating the theme. It was a bit sloppy of me, but luckily nothing catastrophic. This is also something that never occurred to me as it was like this in the default theme and I never changed it. It is an interesting thought that actually makes sense in its own way and I might just try that out as well. The hover state for links in the message container is an unintentional color inconsistency that I will take care of in a new update, so in other words - my bad. Thank you for pointing it out. Having tested several versions of that menu, I do disagree with you but if the majority calls for a change it'll have to be done. Looks like the "new posts" button was very popular so I might implement a quick fix right now before working on integrating the whole sub-navigation again. I very much appreciate the high praise. About the flaws - if there's anything in specific you think looks weird or wrong feel free to send me a PM and I'll see what I can do. Thanks!
I simply can't overstate how happy I am to see those vote percentages. Thanks for the great feedback everyone!
