Forum themes?

[JeGr]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

For myself I find the lack of grids and boxed layouts refreshing and having a clean and simple interface to scroll through posts and topics (automagically paginating) without having huge spaces lost for old 90s/2000s style forum layouts is a blessing especially on mobiles.

[kpa]

I think the part that would need a redesign in the new layout is the grouping of subcategories under the main categories. Now they look unorganized and use of the random colors in the bubbles gives rather unprofessional impression.

[NogBadTheBad]

@kpa said in Forum themes?:

I think the part that would need a redesign in the new layout is the grouping of subcategories under the main categories. Now they look unorganized and use of the random colors in the bubbles gives rather unprofessional impression.

I'm with you here, would rather see each sub category on it's own line if possible.

[jdillard]

There are better themes out there, but they aren't maintained as well as the "core" themes. We are still getting a feel for the nodeBB release cadence and the amount of work it would take to keep the themes in line with releases, so that a broken theme doesn't prevent a critical update. We are also getting a feel for how much trouble keeping theme customizations from contaminating future theme releases is going to be with nodeBB.

[lburr]

@jdillard I've tried all of the default themes, but it doesn't change the home page text layout. It's hard to quickly locate a subcategory & the random colors don't help me either.

If you could change the layout to 3 columns (8 subcategories/column), it will be a lot easier to use.

[johnpoz]

@lburr

Maybe the colors mean something like how many posts in that category? I wouldn't think just random would be used - based on "something" I would think.

You should want the listing more justified I take it vs the lines being of different lengths.

[lburr]

@johnpoz Yes, I'm sure there is a reason behind the colors but without documentation it's useless.

There are 8 different bubble colors, unless these are important I would get rid of them so the page is easier to read.

On the 3 column idea... something like this would be better in my opinion:

[johnpoz]

@lburr

I concur, the bubbles are distraction. To be honest even if we knew the criteria that specified what color don't think many users would be interested. And I like the justified column look better myself.

Lets give them some time... Its only been a few days since new site came up.. And did you see all the edit features they just added.. Sure those will be very handy once get the hang of using them.

edit: I think they are working on it now the bubbles on the first page now have some logos in them vs just the default chat looking bubble ;) And they look smaller and now there are pfsense and netgate logo's next to the different parent categories... Give them a few weeks to work out the kinks and pretty sure going to be like WTF took them so long to move - should of done it years ago ;)

[NogBadTheBad]

Can you please remove Recent Posts from the bottom of each page, its annoying to say the least.

It's even showing me a Russian post from the Russian section.

[ivor]

We're testing. It was ugly to us too and removed before you posted here. We notice that stuff, just like you ;)

[NogBadTheBad]

@ivor said in Forum themes?:

We're testing. It was ugly to us too and removed before you posted here. We notice that stuff, just like you ;)

Can you not have a duplicate of the forum to test with ?

[lburr]

@johnpoz Yes it looks like they're actively working on it, will be interesting to watch the progress.

@ivor If you can restrict the Recent Posts to just the home page, I'd actually like it.

[johnpoz]

I am still seeing the recent stuff on the bottom.. Not a fan..

As to them testing on a different duplicate - then they wouldn't get user reaction..

[ivor]

@nogbadthebad

[ivor]

@johnpoz yeah, it should only be on main page, we just noticed that!

[lburr]

@ivor Much better!

[johnpoz]

And seeing foreign language topics as well.. I have the international section ignored so shouldn't any of those topics not show up in that recent list just like how they don't show up in the new posts listing for unread?

edit: Gone... Nice fun working on how the site looks in realtime ;) hehehe

[NogBadTheBad]

@ivor said in Forum themes?:

@nogbadthebad

:)

[lburr]

@johnpoz How do you ignore posts written in other languages? I've looked around a bit but can't find it...

[valnar]

@jegr I want the grid boxes back because it uses real estate better on the screen. These bubbles and wide spaces make it harder to find things. Most other forums are that way too.