Sorting out these forums...

[KInG]

I've talked to Dan many times, and ribbed him about the state of his forums.

I wanna know if you all agree, now we have a new influx of new guests, if these forums need some tidying up. Format, colour, and maybe some nice layout.

Personaly I find them quite hard to read and follow

Thoughts please.

[mattjgilbert]

Yeah - initial impressions are that things are a little cluttered and hard to find to start with.

[Spack]

I'm not a designer, and I'm open to suggestions

[KInG]

just copy mine use diff colours. lol

[Spack]

No!

[KInG]

Well the 1st thing and easiet, it to make alternative posts a diff colour. If I were you, thank God I'm not you freak, lol (show them ur scary Dan image please so they can see I'm serious )

I would opt for a slightly lighter colour than the present one.

Try that and U'll see an immediate improvement, honest

[Spack]

I'm not happy with the colour, but it's a start.

However, I do remember why I didn't do this before - it messes up other tables in the forum due to the classes being used for columns as well as alternate rows in the topic ...

Right, create a new style just for rows in the topic view, but I've had to hardcode them into the viewtopic php because this damn forum isn't pulling them out of the theme file ...

[mattjgilbert]

There is also a lot going on on most pages (too much perhaps). And the layout seems odd. I'll try and put my finger on it and come up with some ideas.

[KInG]

try this next dan, make the other alternating colur lighter again that the background and the 2nd choice you made. it will all gell a little better then trust me.

you could be real bold and try white... or something just off white in the blue department.

if u wanna try the next thing it would be to get rid of the gay pink coloured links lol

I hope everyone knows we are friends Spacker, otherwise they will think I'm a right arrogant git

Try plain yellow as in Matt's sig but not on the white if u go white..

[AdrianG]

I find them not too bad to move around in... You want confusing, go to
http://z14.invisionfree.com/Brainstock/index.php? for a right mess of a forum. Edit: To clarify, following some forum topics and sections can take an age to find.
Colour variation in posts sounds quite a useful idea along with maybe each post "letter boxed"? So that each post is clearly defined?
I know nothing about PhP etc. so I wouldn't know if thats workable.
Just my 1.44 Euros

[KInG]

maybe I shouldn't be the one advising you coz i quite like them forums lol

[Spack]

The links aren't pink, they're orange. Do you need specs?

I've added another row colour, and done the same on the view forum page (although it looks a bit stripey) . I'm also testing dropping the left nav menu while in the forums

Thinking about maybe moving the profile/pm/email/etc buttons to a drop down under the member avatar.

[mattjgilbert]

Dropping the left-hand nav menu has had a positive impact User options next to their picture is a good idea too.

Right... the front page. What is this site trying to be? It's not clear from the front page. The navigation is small and in the middle left. There are random images dotted around and the shoutbox catches the eye and detracts from everything else over on the left. The top five posts in the forums should only be in the forums I think - It adds more clutter to the front page.

This is the page people see when they hit the site. The welcome message is in a box-out halfway down the page. I think there is too much going on. Make it simple. Put the important things in the right places from top to bottom. Don't have four columns of stuff hitting the reader in the face all in one go.

I'm not a designer either but first impressions can say a lot. Make the site obvious and easy to figure out and people will be happy and more people will join. TBH, I've come here before but shied away because I had no idea where to go or what I was doing.

There. Do you now hate me? The newbie having a rant I hope this is constructive. The work and effort behind the site is obvious but you need to show off your work in the right way.

[bnf]

Imho, there are far too many subforums.
It's not like this board has a couple thousand active users who fill them all up, I'd consolidate a lot of the subforums in order to get a smaller number of sections with more content in each one.

[Spack]

OK, I've messed with the front page a bit. I've removed the gallery pics and search, dumped the shoutbox, removed the "what the site is" blurb, removed the newest forum posts, and the latest news is moved into the main space.

I've also added something I've had kicking around for ages - a newest 10 rumours from Warseer using their RSS feed (it caches the data, so it's only pulling once an hour).

bnf, I agree, there are too many. I'll look at moving stuff around and combining forums today, and hide all the ones that aren't needed yet. How about I drop all the race specific forums, and just stick the ones under the Warhammer 40k category for now?

UPDATE: I've moved all the posts out of the Races forums into where I thought they'd fit best and removed all the forums. I've also stripped down the Other forum to just AI and Other, and adjusted the ordering of a few. Hopefully it's a bit easier to see what's going on now.