Empirekicking, Forum Update – Site Improvements & Ongoing Work

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I’ve been doing quite a bit of work behind the scenes on the forum recently, so I wanted to post a quick update about some of the improvements that have been made to EmpireKicking ForumSpark.

One of the visible additions you’ll now notice is a new “Our Affiliates” section which sits just above the footer. This will highlight communities and sites that we’re connected with and helps build a bit more of a network around the forum.

A lot of time was also spent going through the CSS styling sheet from top to bottom. I cleaned up a lot of deprecated or unnecessary code, reorganised sections, and optimised it so the site runs cleaner and is easier to maintain going forward. While doing this I also made a number of visual improvements across the forum.

You’ll probably notice the buttons and colour scheme have been updated in several areas. I adjusted the styling for things like the BBCode formatting buttons on the reply editor, along with many other interface buttons around the forum. The aim was to make things clearer, easier to read, and generally more user friendly. The previous styling worked, but it wasn’t always the easiest on the eyes, so these tweaks should make navigation and posting a bit smoother.

Another small but nice addition is country flags, which now appear alongside users so it’s easier to see where members are from at a glance. Thanks to @Cory for that 🙂

I’ve also improved the way videos are embedded on the forum. The system now supports a wider range of video links and formats, making it easier to share content without formatting issues.

Some of you may already know about the Forum Guidelines page, but I’ve also gone back and cleaned that up further to make it clearer and more polished: https://empirekicking.forumspark.net/pages/guidelines

There are still a few things I’m working on. One of the bigger areas that still needs attention is the member profile pages. At the moment the layout and colour choices there are not quite right, some of the text is too light against the background which makes it harder to read. I’ll be adjusting the layout, colours, and overall styling of profiles to make them look better and improve readability.

So the forum is still very much a work in progress, but the goal is to keep refining things so it looks cleaner, performs better, and is easier for everyone to use.

More updates soon.

 

[Katrina]

I’ve been doing quite a bit of work behind the scenes on the forum recently, so I wanted to post a quick update about some of the improvements that have been made to EmpireKicking ForumSpark.

One of the visible additions you’ll now notice is a new “Our Affiliates” section which sits just above the footer. This will highlight communities and sites that we’re connected with and helps build a bit more of a network around the forum.

A lot of time was also spent going through the CSS styling sheet from top to bottom. I cleaned up a lot of deprecated or unnecessary code, reorganised sections, and optimised it so the site runs cleaner and is easier to maintain going forward. While doing this I also made a number of visual improvements across the forum.

You’ll probably notice the buttons and colour scheme have been updated in several areas. I adjusted the styling for things like the BBCode formatting buttons on the reply editor, along with many other interface buttons around the forum. The aim was to make things clearer, easier to read, and generally more user friendly. The previous styling worked, but it wasn’t always the easiest on the eyes, so these tweaks should make navigation and posting a bit smoother.

Another small but nice addition is country flags, which now appear alongside users so it’s easier to see where members are from at a glance. Thanks to @Cory for that 🙂

I’ve also improved the way videos are embedded on the forum. The system now supports a wider range of video links and formats, making it easier to share content without formatting issues.

Some of you may already know about the Forum Guidelines page, but I’ve also gone back and cleaned that up further to make it clearer and more polished: https://empirekicking.forumspark.net/pages/guidelines

There are still a few things I’m working on. One of the bigger areas that still needs attention is the member profile pages. At the moment the layout and colour choices there are not quite right, some of the text is too light against the background which makes it harder to read. I’ll be adjusting the layout, colours, and overall styling of profiles to make them look better and improve readability.

So the forum is still very much a work in progress, but the goal is to keep refining things so it looks cleaner, performs better, and is easier for everyone to use.

More updates soon.

Yours is one of the most advanced looking ForumSpark forums I've seen so far! It's so customized and looks beautiful!

 

[Gizmo]

Very cool Roger

 

[Page]

Very cool Roger

WHere is your updates then 😛

 

[Page]

Yours is one of the most advanced looking ForumSpark forums I've seen so far! It's so customized and looks beautiful!

Anyone can put the time and work into something and get good results. That said, it’s worth noting I probably have the smallest number of members… and a forum that’s basically dead compared to the rest of you. While everyone else is focused on growing their communities and not tweaking the theme, I’ve been thinking about something that makes you wonder why people join sites with very basic or even boring designs, sometimes all pink and nothing special, instead of a well-designed one. But in the end, I think it comes down to the members and the content that gets people into the conversation.

Gaming and Twitch streaming communities can actually be quite hard to grow because getting people actively involved in that kind of content isn’t always easy.