Hi, I'm looking for your opinion on a particular aspect of our forum, the style.

Jinksy and I are not yet committed to changing the forum's style from the default prosilver. We've been sampling styles at http://www.phpbbhacks.com/stylesdemo/ and we've been eliminating any that we have an averse reaction to.

I would really appreciate your opinion on the remaining forums. The Icon or banner at the top of the forum style is not relevant because we will soon replace it anyway. Here they are:

4poziom (all colours)
inspiration
glacier
milky way red
maybe probuntu
soul city
VistaX

Cheers,
Ryan

I like 4pozium, glacier and soul city - the light/blue ones, not the red ones.

Good: 4poziom, glacier and VistaX
Medium: inspuration, probuntu and soul city
Bad: 4poziomSEOs and milky way red

I'd like to try a few more suggestions, partly because if we get a logo professionally designed it would be nice to give the designer a few options and partly because we keep coming back to a subdued blue look. While I like it to look at, I'm not sure something that cold-looking will encourage social posting.

From browsing this site, these are the ones I contemplated:

(Ryan, since there are so many, can I volunteer you to do this first, before inflicting it on our other members? - as before, the main thing is to get rid of ones we dislike)

AeroBlue (oops)
AeroGreen
AeroRed
AvalonCyan
AZSerene
BlueMoon (doh)
blueSilver (sigh)
DesignBB
envision
eTech
eTech Cyan
eTech DarkGreen
GreenGrass
Iconic
IconicDark (the iconics would be my fave so far (as I go down), but there's some sort of scripting error that makes the 'post reply' and 'post new thread' buttons in a display overwrite the button with the same phrase in plain text - anyone have that issue?)
ktukblack
nexus
OAgreenland
OApurpleglossy
OATempleofZeus
rednblack
repurple

Ta,

J

I like:

AeroBlue, AeroGreen, Blue Moon, eTech, ktukblack, nexus, OATempleofZeus.

Like:
Blue Moon
Bluesilver
ETech
Etech cyan
Etech dark green
Nexus (wow. I must say I take a serious personal liking to this one. It’s a powerful style)
OApurpleglossy
rednblack (I like this one. It is similar to redsilver which I also like)
repurple

Okay:
Aeroblue (however, all the Aero ones have headings sticking out the left hand side)
Aerogreen
AZ_serene
GreenGrass
Iconic & Iconicdark (There's that dodgy overlapping thing and also the images are all a bit pixellated)
Oagreenland (I like what he was trying to do here but there are contrast problems and the page which lists the threads looks a bit ugly)
OATempleofZeus (the mythology style icons are probably inappropriate)


Dislike:
Aerored
AvalonCyan (it’s so pale)
designBB (it is similar to default but worse)
Envision (I think the green highlights make it look ugly)
Ktukblack (I would find it very hard to select a greyscale style for Felicifia)

Before I forget:

(3:13:27 PM) ryan: Kieran says:

well Ive only seen the 2 aeros so far

Kieran says:

they both look really nice

Kieran says:

better than the forums I go to

ryan says:

cool

Kieran says:

ok Blue moon is pretty bad

Kieran says:

ok Blue moon is pretty bad

Kieran says:

e-tech's pretty nice too

Kieran says:

I really like the symbols for that one

ryan says:

cool

Kieran says:

ktukblack is mid range

Temple of Zeus is amazing

Kieran says:

go with that one

Kieran says:

ok seeing all of them

Kieran says:

only Bluesilver, Bluemoon, Repurple and Glossy purple are bad

Kieran says:

the rest would all be good

RyanCarey wrote:I would really appreciate your opinion on the remaining forums. The Icon or banner at the top of the forum style is not relevant because we will soon replace it anyway. Here they are:

4poziom (all colours)
inspiration
glacier
milky way red
maybe probuntu
soul city
VistaX

Jinksy asked me to look between these - I have no clear favourite; none in my eyes is significantly better than any other. Sorry!

Joe

Annoyingly I'm still not sure we've found our default style. I want to say Nexus, but I'm finding the stark white background colour of posts generates too much glare. In that respect, I think ProSilver is still the best of the bunch - it's got just the right balance of contrast with reduced glare to make reading longer posts more pleasant. I found another comparison site, so here're a few more suggestions:

Fae Forest
Transparent
SmoothBLUE
Saphic

Fae Forest: Okay
Transparent: Too bright
SmoothBLUE: Too bloated-looking
Saphic: Okay