NEW Page Layout.

[Angelis83LT]

OK All, I finally got the ability to to some changes. I am sure you have noticed them before even seeing this. There are a few glitches however. The most notable one for those of you viewing the page on a smaller screen. The Post area and the area where the Topics are can get a little strange.

I am working on trying to figure out what causes this odd behavior. Seems to be a combination of things regarding the size of the individual pieces of the page. I will do some testing of the resolutions to see if I can get it down a little bit. But it is something with this particular board. (I have the same coding so far on both this and my test server and it acts a bit differently.)

So it will be a work in progress. Some of the issues could also be coding bugs in VB itself. (I was testing using version 3.7.4 where it is only 3.7.0 here. They may have fixed an issue in there)

Below is a list Of things that are going to change shortly



Signature

I Will be fixing the Signature Upload problems. You will be able to upload a signature that is within the rules size wise (600wide by 150tall).
The [IMG] bbcode will be disabled until I can get FTP access
This means that You will HAVE TO UPLOAD YOUR SIGNATURE in the edit signature panel. As an image link will not work
I am giving one weeks worth of notice starting today for everyone to get things going. If you have an issue with a sig images' size, please PM one of us and we may be able to help re-size it.


People in moderation

I know there are alot of you in there. I will go through and weed out as many spambots as I can and approve those who are not. I will also look into getting an Akismet Key so it will automatically wees out the spammers and leave the average people alone.




There may be other changes to the site as well.

Things that need to be addressed



The left hand Side bar with the link in it

Who uses this and who wants it to stay?
If we decide to keep it I will try to make some allowances in total horizontal size so everything stays mostly lined up (unless you are on a weeee little monitor.


Resolution Size of the members. A Poll will be placed. It will ask the most common resolution that is used for viewing this site. That resolution will be made the optimum resolution to view the site at.
Cell Phone Users.

The site is not really suited to cell phone usage yet in full view. This is due to it not scaling properly. I am hoping I can find the reason and resolve it Although there is no guarantee on it with this version of VB.





Any questions Please ask me. This is by no means finished.

*****Edit*****
*update* the issue with scaling is due to the sub-forums. It creates an issue where they can not shrink down which causes the pages layout to go a little weird. I have fixed the issue as best as can be by removing the thread and post count for sub forums. This should allow usage on all devices including cell phones

****Edit #2****

*update* The signature issue may be getting corrected to allow both the usage of the image tag and the upload feature. So either can be used. I will be playing with it to see about getting things straight with it. It may still require people to re-size their sig images if it is not within forum rule specs.

[RageAgainstTheMinivan]

Looks great so far!

[Evan IROC-Z]

Is there a way to make the new post notification on the main page a little more pronounce? I know it look physically different than the one with no new posts, but color wise they are extremely similar. Small request. Otherwise I really like the new layout. Good job and thanks for the hard work.

[SAMSONite]

The black on the sides is kind of distracting. Can that be changed to white or grey?

[Adam86]

Looks great in here!

[scorpner]

Looks great! :bigok:

The left side bar is/was handy, but I don't think I personally ever used it enough to justify the loss of screen space. Maybe more so for others?
I am probably one of the few still running 1280x1040 though.

Since you're tweaking things would it be possible to increase the default setting for posted images? It would be nice if they were allowed to be just large enough to fit without having to click on every single image and then un-click them to read without scrolling.

Hopefully some of the other mods can pitch in and help weed out the bots for now. If the work is divided up it may make things easier.

Will it be possible to keep the active time/temp icon in my sig?

Thanks for the work you're putting into this, it's much appreciated. :thumb:

[93NotchLX]

I saw the new page layout and then I jizzed in my pants.

[383T/A]

I saw the new page layout and then I jizzed in my pants.

You really should get that checked out by the DR.:roofles:

[Angelis83LT]

Is there a way to make the new post notification on the main page a little more pronounce? I know it look physically different than the one with no new posts, but color wise they are extremely similar. Small request. Otherwise I really like the new layout. Good job and thanks for the hard work.

Yes, I was planing on making it a different color than the rest of the set. That way it pops out at you.

The black on the sides is kind of distracting. Can that be changed to white or grey?

White or gray would make it hard on the eyeballs on larger screen monitors. I was planing on making it a different color, but the black is there more for design purposes so I can make sure everything lines up the way it is supposed to. Also gives a positive visual on exactly how wide the things actually are in the main content window.

Looks great! :bigok:

The left side bar is/was handy, but I don't think I personally ever used it enough to justify the loss of screen space. Maybe more so for others?
I am probably one of the few still running 1280x1040 though.

Since you're tweaking things would it be possible to increase the default setting for posted images? It would be nice if they were allowed to be just large enough to fit without having to click on every single image and then un-click them to read without scrolling.

Hopefully some of the other mods can pitch in and help weed out the bots for now. If the work is divided up it may make things easier.

Will it be possible to keep the active time/temp icon in my sig?

Thanks for the work you're putting into this, it's much appreciated. :thumb:

Yea, I never used that side bar ever. Most of the things related to it were never used either, like the help center and things like that. The help center will make it back into the site for Site specific questions / issues and such. But that will be about it for it.

As far as posted images. are you talking about the normal images that people post that are automatically re-sized? I Can increase the size I believe of the "minimized" image so you do not always have to click on them. The original picture size however I can not control, so if you expand one, you more than likely will have to click it down. Another way to do it would be to have the original picture not expand within the forum page itself, but to be displayed in a litebox type of way.

As for the temp thing. You may very well get to keep it. I have to update the above message.

[scorpner]

As far as posted images. are you talking about the normal images that people post that are automatically re-sized? I Can increase the size I believe of the "minimized" image so you do not always have to click on them. The original picture size however I can not control, so if you expand one, you more than likely will have to click it down. Another way to do it would be to have the original picture not expand within the forum page itself, but to be displayed in a litebox type of way.

As for the temp thing. You may very well get to keep it. I have to update the above message.
The part in bold was exactly what I was thinking. I was hoping it was something simple you could bump up a bit. I don't know about anyone else but I feel that would be the easiest and best way of doing it.

The temp thing wasn't critical, more of a curiosity. Would be cool to keep it though.

Thank you.

[Angelis83LT]

The part in bold was exactly what I was thinking. I was hoping it was something simple you could bump up a bit. I don't know about anyone else but I feel that would be the easiest and best way of doing it.

The temp thing wasn't critical, more of a curiosity. Would be cool to keep it though.

Thank you.

Ahh k. Yea that should be able to be bumped up pretty easily. it is an addon that controls that. A replacement one will be used instead, which may change things a little for it but not much, and should allow for some adjusting.

The temp thing may be usable once I get the sig resizer in place. then the [img] tags can be used again (probably will not shut them off since I can now upload stuff)

[scorpner]

Good to know, sound like you've already thought about the image thing already. lol

[ColeTrain'sC5]

I like this layout too but changes are always good with forums. It's nice to change it up a bit sometimes

[Sk8phreak88]

Everything looks great to me as well. Only thing I don't like was stated already by Samsonite, about the sides being black. I'd like them to be more the same color as the rest over being such a drastic change. To me, it makes it look like somebody's trying to make it look "cool and in style" Instead of a more Professional all one color look. Just my opinion though. ;)

[Smus]

All in all it looks great. I had no problems accessing it on my droid...so that's good too.

[XcYZ]

I like the changes, I like everything you've done... except the header. As a constructive criticism, the checkerboard background really needs to be toned down. It's like you're looking at one of those optical illusion deals. I think a softer pattern, or maybe some abstract art, would be better.

[Angelis83LT]

Everything looks great to me as well. Only thing I don't like was stated already by Samsonite, about the sides being black. I'd like them to be more the same color as the rest over being such a drastic change. To me, it makes it look like somebody's trying to make it look "cool and in style" Instead of a more Professional all one color look. Just my opinion though. ;)

One must define this professional style you speak of lol. The sides will probably go to a more friendly color. People have moved far away from the one color situation though. What would you say would be a nice color. like a darker soft blue?

I like the changes, I like everything you've done... except the header. As a constructive criticism, the checkerboard background really needs to be toned down. It's like you're looking at one of those optical illusion deals. I think a softer pattern, or maybe some abstract art, would be better.

I will go with you on that. The difficulty with the header is that the image is actually only 2 squares wide. This is so that no matter the width of the page, you get the entire header. (as the Image repeats). This only works with pretty simply stuff. now, if I were to make the page static (IE the width of everything was set and it would not expand or contract), than a static image could easily be used. Knowing that many here like to surf the place on their phones, I choose to go with the dynamic setup. (Now hthat I pay attention to it for more than 5 seconds you are right, it starts to move on you lol. I will see what I can do about a better background for that. Might take a little bit though. Originally in a static page that checker is actually a flag. That breaks up the issue. Would you say darkening or washing it out would work a little better? Might not be so eye grabby then.)

The Layout is pretty much what I posted about a month or so ago as a test run. It is not exact, but overall is pretty close. (Some things can not be done here like in the layout I posted. two different versions of VB)

Thanks for the feedback though. Always need it in order to improve, since any good website is never truly finished.

If I can ever get the themes to work properly, we will have a few different choices. I will probably make 3 or 4 styles to suite a wide variety of things. A full Side to side like the original, this one, a Full Static Page (With a slightly different header background image), and then another one I have not thought of yet. Overall I am hoping that we can hit most all of the marks.

[scorpner]

I agree, that does kind of limit things, before it was about 3 pixels wide. lol

It's interesting how you did the member of the month over the top with part of it being translucent. I never thought of that. :think:

[Angelis83LT]

I agree, that does kind of limit things, before it was about 3 pixels wide. lol

It's interesting how you did the member of the month over the top with part of it being translucent. I never thought of that. :think:

The COTM / MOTM is actually 8 images stacked on top of each other lol. but yea. I do all of my images with no background color. Allows for some interesting effects. I am hoping that things speed back up here. we will see by tomorrow. I am working on finishing up the main static area template. (so we have something at www.mngmp.org other than a giant logo).

[MaroonZ28]

Can we make the site orange?

[Angelis83LT]

Can we make the site orange?


LOL. prooooobably not. At least not right now. Full on orange would hurt most peoples eyes (including my own heh). Although if the styles ever get to working right, making an orange one would not be hard. although I am sure you would be the only one to actually use it lol.

[RageAgainstTheMinivan]

although I am sure you would be the only one to actually use it lol.

Negative, sir

Check out ls1tech page settings. I think its called darkside that I use. Background is black, header and text orange, post boxes blue. Personally grey and blue are great colors for this site to best match the GM logo.

[MaroonZ28]

Orange is still a better color.