In a way, I like cheesy themes from old times better. You know, like from Zetaboards or SMF. But anyway, you can always color a premium theme and make it something else. Otherwise, it's an all-black or all-white theme, something generic like that.
Dull Themes for Premium Forum Software
- Thread starter Jason76
- Start date
A dull theme that's simple can run better on users end then a heavy theme. Like the more you have in details of the theme the longer it takes to load.
But I rather not have an boring theme
But I rather not have an boring theme
Could hurt SEO, but I don't like SEO, if possible to get traffic other ways, then great.
that's new for you to say that! what's the reason then?
A theme doesn't have to be heavy to be interesting and you can usually do a number of things like using a CDN to serve resources closer to the user to help speed things up.
Zetaboards was a wonderful time where people were all practicing skills and there were a great influx of new and different designs. People were trying to better their own work compared to others. Sometimes I see good themes... I don't necessarily want a CRAZY theme... but I would like something less plain and more clean cut and beautiful lol.
It's all because there are less designers, or they don't get paid enough so they don't bother.
It's all because there are less designers, or they don't get paid enough so they don't bother.
I haven't really used Zetaboards, but I do agree that there's a lot less enthusiasm for design and more sticking to the usual templates.
There are probably many reasons for it, but designing is getting more and more complicated by the day with long pipelines, transpilers, and more rules about what is good and what is not.
I have read practically hundreds of usability articles, as I wanted to make a more palatable design for people, and my goodness, is it an ocean of information. So, it probably really is easier to just stick to a spec or a standard than it is to go out into the ocean on your own.
I can say the same for MyBB and WordPress. I seen more themes then other platform. Not the fact that they are bigger in terms of how many people use it it's more regards it's easy to code and build.
More more complicated? I remember when "Div" came in and told it was easy to do "div statement" and it was. It cut the code down by 20% and looks cleaner. I think most don't worry about what rules and whatnot.
One case would be responsive designs, those add a fair bit of work, especially if you're going to do it properly rather than just scaling up a mobile theme.
Also, web design has been largely commoditized, it's less of an art than it was earlier on and is largely a means to an end now.
Plus, if we're talking about tables, then things like grids are fairly easy to do in them, as opposed to some of the newer things which require a lot more CSS.
CosmicEternity
Acquaintance
YES.
The forum software I'm using is pretty much lifted from 2005 style internet and hasn't seen much work on the layout since then other than cleanups and stuff. (though I'm using a production-ready, generally better fork of the software in question that was updated mere hours ago)
seems design has to be bland and boring to be professional, what happened to character
CosmicEternity
Acquaintance
>but I don't like SEO
i agree with this too, it's basically useless what with google personalised search and stuff
rip.
Collectively, I've never seen a forum software that has as good of themes as ZB has (had). Do other software have great, beautiful themes? Yes. But not to the same extent. The one exception would be xenforo and even that seems to be only recently, and they're rarely free like 99% of the ZB ones.
You don't really need a dated software to get an old fashioned theme, although I don't really make that sort of theme, as I doubt anyone would really use it.YES.
The forum software I'm using is pretty much lifted from 2005 style internet and hasn't seen much work on the layout since then other than cleanups and stuff. (though I'm using a production-ready, generally better fork of the software in question that was updated mere hours ago)
seems design has to be bland and boring to be professional, what happened to character
People seem to want $1000 XenForo themes, but for free.
If I gave people 2005 themes as options, the themes would probably get one view and zero downloads, but that's my opinion at-least.
As I'm building a forum software, I'm racking my head over this problem lol
As it turns out, the more professional / usable themes also tend to be the most boring themes.
My first three themes for it are along the lines of throw something fun and unique together.
The fourth and fifth are intended to be more professional. All five have the status of default theme, but the fourth is the defaultest default.
Two is being decommissioned, it's a fork of the first which didn't really work.
Three onwards were written completely from scratch much like the first theme.
1: Tempra Simple.
2: Tempra Conflux.
3: Shadow.
4: Cosora.
5: Nox.
There were three experiment ones too, but they were scrapped as they kinda sucked due to too many compromises.
The first three have rotted and probably should get some fresh life injected into them due to the attention Cosora snatched away from them, plus I was a little sceptical about the attention on them.
I probably could do something interesting again or to reinvigorate those, but that might have to wait a short while lol
As it turns out, the more professional / usable themes also tend to be the most boring themes.
My first three themes for it are along the lines of throw something fun and unique together.
The fourth and fifth are intended to be more professional. All five have the status of default theme, but the fourth is the defaultest default.
Two is being decommissioned, it's a fork of the first which didn't really work.
Three onwards were written completely from scratch much like the first theme.
1: Tempra Simple.
2: Tempra Conflux.
3: Shadow.
4: Cosora.
5: Nox.
There were three experiment ones too, but they were scrapped as they kinda sucked due to too many compromises.
The first three have rotted and probably should get some fresh life injected into them due to the attention Cosora snatched away from them, plus I was a little sceptical about the attention on them.
I probably could do something interesting again or to reinvigorate those, but that might have to wait a short while lol
That's what they do with sites running Discourse. It still looks the same lol
XenForo in particular is a very... Business oriented platform, I would find.
Everything costs money. Money, money, money.
$40 for a forum ban plugin. $40 for this plugin. $40 for that plugin.
Some people pay $1000 for custom themes. Yada yada. And the people who most likely have that sort of serious money are people running a business.
I like other projects, even from the aspect of just casually being able to chill and talk about random things and interests with the developers, as opposed to it being like talking to a support representative.
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