New Board

[erin]

Hey all. As you may have noticed if you found your way to the much neglected announcements forum, we have a new board layout, following a new board install. After two years of very kind hosting, Agora is condensing down its servers and we're on a new one, independent (which is a better idea anyway). I took the migration opportunity to upgrade the board to phpBB3. Hopefully we won't regret it.

Please drop me an email/PM if anything seems to be not working. I've already found and fixed a few glitches with the new theme, and as time allows I'll work on modifying it to get the logos back up, etc.

Happy 2009!

[erin]

Oh, also, if you have any feedback on the board appearance, please feel free to either message me or post here. I like the colors on this one but I'm undecided on its utility -- our old theme made it easier to visually distinguish new posts from old. All suggestions welcome -- I've been looking at http://www.phpbb3styles.net/ for style options, so if you see something over there you like, let me know and I'll install it.

[jazzy0000]

Whoa, new look!

It'll take me a little time to digest the changes before I can post useful feedback; my initial gut reaction is usually to fear change...

[Anguirel]

I'll need to actually see the New Posts icon appear, as I think I missed it on my initial look at the board, but that's a big one for me, as I typically load and glance quickly to see if anything new is around. Alternately having the "View New Posts" link at the top display how many new posts there are (I know some phpBB forums show this somehow - probably via a specific theme or widget), that'd work for me, though I'd still want it to show visually for each forum and each post nicely. So I guess now I get to wait for someone else to post...

Otherwise the new board seems good, though beyond colors it doesn't feel too terribly different from the old.

[erin]

Ha! I appreciate that you filter your gut reaction and analyze. I expect this one will change, but I did at least try to keep the colors as similar as I could. Looking forward to your comments.

[Anguirel]

New Post icon is visible, though definitely more subtle than the old one. Probably good enough.

[jazzy0000]

OK, first thoughts.

1) The color scheme is markedly different: the old one was mostly neutral grays and blacks; this one is white on black in a sea of red. I think the red is too vivid and distracting, and would prefer a dark gray, or failing that, a much less saturated red. (I realize there's a sorta floral, vaguely paisley-ish pattern going on.) Also, I think white on dark gray is a bit easier to read, but that could just be me.

By the way, does PHPBB3 have the ability to let individual users select either dark-on-light or light-on-dark color schemes? (answering myself: yes, there's "prosilver". I might just use that.)

2) Functionality. I admit I don't remember the old version very well because I've been on this board infrequently, but I miss handy features like "quote this post", "quick reply", "edit this post", and so forth. (Interestingly, they're still available in the prosilver board format.)

2b) I kinda like using BBCode; is there a reason it's been turned off? Is it due to the board style?

3) alternate styles: bmiles3 looks easy on the eyes. The only thing elementRed has on it, in my opinion, is that elementRed works better for wide browser windows because it forces the forum into a narrow column down the middle.

Also, eMuza2, Serenity, SoftBrown, and Transparent all look kinda nice.

http://www.phpbb3styles.net/db/style/bmiles
http://www.phpbb3styles.net/db/style/eMuza2
http://www.phpbb3styles.net/db/style/Serenity
http://www.phpbb3styles.net/db/style/SoftBrown
http://www.phpbb3styles.net/db/style/transparent

[Necroyeti]

I was going to post just about everything jazzy0000 said... I hadn't noticed the BBCode being off, and frankly don't really care, although the choice of it being there would be nice. I'm guessing it was disabled to prevent robot abuse?