New color schemes

[Dive Bomb]

Any new color schemes on the way? These colors aren't bad but alot of forums I go to let you choose which colors you want, giving you options. I haven't seen that here, if it's here just let me know but if not, is there any indiciation of an upgrade in the future?

[Adrienne]

You mean change the current color scheme for everyone? or that each person can chose there color scheme? like i can have a black one one while you have a purple one?

Adrienne

[Dive Bomb]

Haha the latter, each person can choose what colors they want. I think it would add to the forum experience

[Keith]

Although it might be cool to have a different default colour for each forum - that way there'd be a subtle visual cue of which forum you're looking at. I vote a (tasteful!) pink for the recreation and fun forum.

[Seth]

Haven't you heard of subjective reality? You can make the colors whatever you want. Stop repressing your inner conflict with your color choosing ability.

[mentalmosaic]

Don't forget, everyone, Steve's colorblind!

I doubt he really cares about the color schemes - subjective reality or no...

[Adrienne]

I have not seen this suggestion before posted.

Right now, Steve is not really doing huge improvements or PCRs on the forums. He is waiting on a couple things, but when he asks for the suggestions the mods have seen or would like, i will be sure to mention it.

Adrienne

[Bruce Achterberg]

Originally Posted by mentalmosaic

Don't forget, everyone, Steve's colorblind!

I doubt he really cares about the color schemes - subjective reality or no...

Worry not MentalMosaic, the “normal team” (otherwise known as the moderator team + Erin) greatly outweighs the colour-blind team (ie. Steve, otherwise known as “Team Steve”). Even if there are a few colour-blind mods I don’t know of, we’ll make sure Team Steve doesn’t turn the forum fluoro purple.

Interestingly, here's a link to an image example of what the Pavlina forum might look like to a colour-blind person (I think... I'm not sure what all those options mean when you're trying to convert an image, so I may have done something wrong):

Vischeck: Daltonize : a new look at color blindness

I'm not sure how accurate that website is, though. If anyone was interested in Steve's case of colour-blindness, he wrote about it here.

Originally Posted by Dive Bomb

Any new color schemes on the way? These colors aren't bad but alot of forums I go to let you choose which colors you want, giving you options. I haven't seen that here, if it's here just let me know but if not, is there any indiciation of an upgrade in the future?

As for the actual colour scheme suggestion, I have to agree with MentalMosaic -- I doubt Steve is really concerned. From what I know of Steve, he tends to favour high payoff projects and general efficiency, so we’ll probably be sticking with what we have for now. Don't get me wrong, though; it's not a bad suggestion, it's just not too far up there in terms of priority. I actually really like the idea of having different colours for each board, but I think that may be a little tricky to do in a manner that actually works well in practice.

Either way, if enough people show interest and Steve/Erin think it’s worthy, I’m sure they’ll consider it (although I have a feeling Steve would rather do an actual redesign of the forums or something so that they match his website... from what I’ve read, there’s lots Steve would like to do to his website, he just doesn’t have the time). Personally I'd love the option to have a theme with a black background and pastel colour text so the forums are easier on the eyes (if you like your eyesight, the less white/bright colours when viewing a computer monitor, the better).

If such a thing ever did go ahead (as in, more colour schemes), I'd be in there to make sure that we get options instead of "here's a new colour scheme... hope you like it, because we didn't give you options for anything else! Hahahaha!". I'm a big advocate of good, intelligent, non-silly design, so I'll do my best to make sure nothing silly gets done.

If/when Steve hires a webmaster/administrator, I'll be sure to inundate him/her with a whole lot of stuff we can do to the forums to improve it (I'd make the additions myself, but alas, I lack the admin-powers). And for those who are thinking, “there’s not much more you could do with the forum to improve it”, you underestimate my ability to optimise, enhance, and generally see a large amount of potential in things. When I want to be, I'm an idea machine (and some of them are actually good, too! ).

Anyway, if any of you are actually keen on getting new colour schemes, if you could suggest (ie. give a link to) a good, free, easy to use/maintain vBulletin plugin that Steve could easily install without it breaking things like the ad layout, the layout in general, and anything else we obviously don't want broken (while still giving users the option to use the default vBulletin colour scheme AS WELL AS other ones -- unless the new colour scheme is clearly superior to the default one), you'd have a better chance of getting them since it makes less work for Steve (assuming Steve/Erin like and are open to the idea).