Themes/Skins

[Buster's Uncle]

So month ago I'd left it like this.

This was a good theme, not screaming for fixes once I'd replaced the original "ASTRONOMY" logo with OUR logo - but there was a smidge of room for tightening topspace left, and the whole thing was --- uniform.  Bland.  Just relentlessly pastel purple everywhere.  Everybody liked it, but no one STAYED long.

I sorta got carried away while I was in there fiddling around anyway.  I ended up turning down the margin padding in the elements of the boxes making up each subforum listing --- and I replaced the purple starscape background with one just as purple, but less pastel, and looking more like night, appropriately.  It's really still a light theme with dark borders, but the contrast bores my weak eyes less.

The new thumbnail below doesn't really capture the look properly - the background's lighter and more nebula action as you scroll down; it's really rather striking.

What it does capture is how much more forum is showing at the top, which increases as you scroll down...




I posted yesterday's updated Enterprise collage shot to an album on AC2's Facebook page this morning; I threw in a #‎StarTrek tag at the end, and it's doing astonishingly better in views and clicks than the rest of the album combined, mostly up since Wednesday. 

So, if you're on Facebook please, PLEASE go have a look at the album and so a little 'like'ing; dare I say some commenting and pic Sharing?  Lurkers can't see these nifty themes, so we need to spread the word actively.



You know any SMACer not on here, but on the Book?  Old-school Trekkers?  Geeks just into that sort of thing?  Let them know.  A few seconds liking, commenting, sharing here and there can make an awesome difference in growing our community. 

Like the page while you're there, too.  Same deal.

[Buster's Uncle]

Halloween before:


After:


It's always a lot of fun tracking down where in the stylesheet any particular theme has hidden things like the menu and the linktree so I can move around.   The improvement in topspace really shows in the right sidebar.

This one had the breadcrumbs in a border box generated somewhere other than index.css that I can't find, so I couldn't move it or get rid of it, which introduced a tiny flaw in the background you can make out in the thumbnail, but hope won't stand out for users.  Tough for my pedantic soul to let it go at that, but diminishing returns to spend half a day hunting down something so minor.

The very top is a great empty field of black so I decided to swap in the wide version of the logo - which demanded that I center it, which the .css code wouldn't do, so I had to in the art, and which sorta forced me to center the menu under it, which is another thing the stylesheet won't just do - so hours burned on just those.

The bit I like about this pass at the theme best is the customization of the logo.  I've done some really cute little thematic adjustments to go with, for example, Winter and Enterprise, and I'm a bit put out that no one has let on that they noticed...

Lean in and look real close; I didn't just turn the planet orange, but the effect I spent so much time on is subtle by design.



I need to update the thumbnail for Curve to reflect changes I made weeks ago, then I'm taking a break to finally watch Star Trek: Renegades after a week, which I anticipate hating even more than most.

Don't forget to vote in the poll at the top of the thread.

[Buster's Uncle]

...Check out the bottom of the right sidebar.  I had an idea yesterday, and The Emissary really came through overnight...

[Buster's Uncle]

Now I don't know what caused me to break off work on the Chilling -- Oh.  It was something to do with the pic for Firaxis AC Old School not displaying when I woke up to find that notorious Pa Wraith (he's someone's daddy) sisko had embellished the Temple of the AC Prophets with that handy Theme Select box on the right.  While I was in there taking a screeny for the updated illo, I thought I'd take a minute to apply the 'position: absolute' line trick to the slogan and pointer.

Typically, the slogan loved it and fell right into line, but the collapse/expand pointer vanished.  Took a while to figure out, 'cause for some reason, positioning it doesn't work the same.    -Any way, it looks exactly the same as after my last pass, but now they don't vanish at any size - in fact, I have to zoom out to 33% before they move out of position at all.

-And while I was in there, I tracked down and adjusted a few other minor issues.  You probably won't notice the difference, but definite improvements.

---

Now back to The Chilling - I was almost through last night, before needing to go to bed so rudely interrupted.

[Buster's Uncle]

...The thing about this work is, you often can't change something without affecting something else you didn't intend.  Also, the type the .css code displays in is about two sizes too small, like some Grinch's heart font.  So everything takes five times longer, minimum...

But finally in the home stretch on The Chilling.  I keep finding stuff in need of attention that I didn't go in there to do, but all to the good if it gets fixed.  Here's the changes I did yesterday before bed:

• Fiddled the board title backgrounds to improve the legibility of the titles.
  
• Those links are green now, which is still a little faint against the quote background, but no longer nearly invisible and looks great everywhere else.
• Re-arranged some index subforum display blocks a little to save vertical space.
  
• Upped all the smaller font sizes slightly - they struck me as pushing too small for good legibility.
  -Jiggering the breadcrumbs and menu top spacing still to go...

[Buster's Uncle]

Green - I saw that you changed themes yourself, so I laid off the sample tour.  -But give Fake CFC and the others you haven't been in a cursory look and let me know what you think of everything.  The new select box on the right is very convenient.

Have I gotten carried away with the topspace efficiency to the point of too-cramped?  I worry.

[Buster's Uncle]

(The Chilling continued)

Realized the Unread Posts thing sitting on the left before the catagories titles was not good, as they sorta ran together and it just didn't belong in front of the title.  Fixed.  Let me know what that borked - it had been changed for a reason, presumably.

Had to do something to those title colors - still a little dim against the background.

Finally got to tightening up the menu and breadcrumbs top spacing a bit more.  Had to adjust the background art to the new configuration.  Narrowed to box to fit better, while I was at it.  Indented the menu a bit.  Had to adjust a width setting to compensate for that making the page run wide/empty space to the right and a bottom scrollbar appearing. 

-Each thing mentioned took at least five times longer, really.

Found where to alter the theme credit at the bottom of pages to say 'based on'.

Updated the thumbnail - the one in place was actually outdated before this pass.



Finally done.  All this was relatively a pretty minor effort, taking under a day while I was also busy on the boards.





Don't forget to express your druthers about SMAC/SMACX theme in the poll.

[Buster's Uncle]

Hey!  I just realized that now that lurkers and the logged-out can access the themes, stupid Firefox is finally useful!  Booting now, to have a look at Thanksgiving...

[Buster's Uncle]

Ooh, yuck.  Confirmed.

Still no idea what to do about it, but now I can see for myself if I have any ideas...
(Firefox is still of the devil.)

[Buster's Uncle]

Since nobody will do me the courtesy of discussing for three days in a row, no report on all the imnprovements you'll never figure out I did.

[Green1]

Bear in mind, BU, a lot of folks may be pulling up your site with smartphones with crap 3G/4G service. Particularly at break on work.

Lots of themes tend to make sites load like crap on these devices. Embedded stuff and java makes it worse.Your front page would destroy a low end android with chrome.

That, and while themes are nice, content is the draw of forums. Most site admins I know may only have 2-3 themes only for aesthetics.

[Buster's Uncle]

We're looking to replace that Front Page.  I've actually created the beginning of a .html template - with the same basic look, but only a background, logo and a button that goes to the forum.  If I had the foggiest about where to even begin with getting the news on there, it would be done and up two weeks ago.

All a forum Front Page needs is visual identification/branding, a portal to the index and that news display.  Oughtta load better, being a great deal less function calls from all over creation to assemble the page, and I skipped a lot of that with one-piece background art.


[shrugs] I got into this thing with themes to conduct a purge - and I didn't count, but something on the order of 50 got shown the door, so I think this project is way over in the plus column on that, even if I didn't get it down to ten and we picked up three more along the way.

I never took any interest in the forum bells-and-whistles before June.  That was sisko's thing; people were mine, and we both do content when he's active.  But a great huge pile of  useless Shop Items I made generated a fair bit of interest, and I think there's going to be a lot of profit from all this flashy non-content crap in the long run.  That I've stepped up my tech game -and understanding of where controls are and how the software works- a couple of levels is going to prove a HUGE bonus.

As for content - after weeks of increasingly feeling like a mole man leaning in squinting at .css code, editing the Beginners' Getting-Started Strategy Guide for Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri / Alien Crossfire into shape is going to seem relaxing and easy, I expect.  It's waited too long.

Something odd's happened to that Front Page template  since I posted a test (Draz?), so going to take another pass at that, then work on the guide.  Nothing in need of urgent attention left in the themes that isn't out of my tech league, anyway.

[Vidsek]

  Concerning replies, at least on my part, I've been reading your progress reports every day and mostly been awestruck at your perseverance and the quality of the results.  My apologies for not making the time to say so....
  I have some idea of what hacking code with minimal formal training involves (decent smarts and a whole lotta time) and you've done a dang fine job of it.
  Two huge improvements: the site is better looking/more easily usable/less bloated, and.....you made a couple themes that *I* like 
  With time, your work, and future insights I know it'll get even better. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Thanks for saying so, Vid.  Have you voted in the poll?

[Vidsek]

   Voted?  There is an especially hideous part of Hell reserved for Voters  (you ENCOURAGED the bstards?!!!!!!!).

Um, yes, I did.   Wanna guess which way?

                       Vidsek, who seriously hopes that poll choices aren't really "voting".........