Complete Forum Revamp

[Starz0r]

Welcome to my complete forum revamp, I've been working a hard 3 months as a secret project I dubbed 'Neptune', to bring this to you guys, and it's finally here.

Now only 90% of the features I've been trying to implement actually work, so bare with me when I do the last 10% eventually. Now on to the features of this update.

A Fresh Clean Look
Gave the forum a HTML5 flat redesign so it looks better and modernized, granted I took some images from other games or message boards, but it still fits, and I like how it works together.

New Customization Profile
You can view your new profile here: https://www.iwannacommunity.com/forum/index.php?action=profile. Created with freedom in mind, you can 'almost' put anything you want there, granted some of it is disabled (or will give you an error when you try to save it), to prevent security issues. I will look in further to what freedoms I can grant later on with this.

Identification System
Currently this has no uses, but your profile will become your ID for various other things once I implement the API system.

Buddy System
Know someone on the forum? Want to friend them for easier contact on the forum? Go ahead, now there is more support than ever for doing such things, and even more support for adding your friends in the future.

Honestly, there is probably a lot more I made, but for the sake of keeping this short, I'll stop it there. I will write a blog post later to go in more detail about these features. I also have 3 other secret projects related to the growing of the community so stay tuned!

Hope you guys enjoy this update!

[lawatson]

dang dude what a legend, a good use of your 3 months indeed!

[tehjman1993]

W o a h

Edit: It stretches profile pictures way too much.

Double Edit: Fate's advice worked - uploading image to imgur then using that as avatar works great

[Swordslinger]

I can dig this new layout, it looks extremely nice, probably the best the forum has looked.

[Derf]

I think trying to expand the community is a good idea, and moving the forums in a more modern direction is also a good idea; however, I do dislike that making the forums look more interesting has come at the expense of its usability.

I really appreciated how neat, concise and clean the forums were even if I suppose they looked boring. For me everything in the new update it too big and too stretched; for example the new profiles on the side are too long and leave way too much dead space after posts meaning that I can only view one post a time without scrolling down, whereas before I could view a much larger portion of threads. The tops of threads also look cluttered to me; the title is formatted weirdly, the replies and post views graphics are large and honestly don't really fit with the rest of the custom graphics and while it's not terribly hard to see I have to wonder why a black title is presented on a mid-grey background.

The main problem is that white is a colour that gives the illusion of space when there is none. The reason the forums didn't look cramped before even though they were compact was because of the overwhelming use of white. Swapping that colour palette out for something darker reduces this expansive effect and I think to compromise everything has been spaced further apart but what it's done in my mind is made everything look cluttered. I think there's even more reason when using darker tones to be concise and compact, Changing my browser settings has helped somewhat but it does seem as though the nice new graphics have come at the cost of relevant information being diluted in page space and fancy graphics.

I don't mean to say that I think the forums look bad, they look great - much better than before. I just feel as though some of the scaling is off and some priorities have been muddled (e.g. I don't know why people's browser and computer data is so important it has to be shown on the side in such a way that inherently creates an amount of dead space after posts that is more often than not larger than the actual posts themselves).

I'm glad this change has happened and I'm excited to see what else you have in store but I do wish you wouldn't do secret projects. I feel like when you're doing things that affect the entire community in such large ways like this you need to have a conversation with them and mediate it with them rather than keeping it to yourself and putting it out there in one irreversible go. I don't think it would reduce the wow factor of reveal at all, in fact I think the hype would be bigger if the whole community had input on changes.




EDIT: Oh damn the unread posts tab is a nice addition.

[JGBMaster]

[Wolsk]

I completely agree with Derf.

And a few added complaints for mobile: tons of text overlaps or is weirdly centered; thread overviews don't provide much information about posters and dates and such; and the avatars and profiles take up significantly more space than most posts.

[sharkruisher]

Almost got a heart attack when I opened the page, a complete, total makeover 

Well done good sir b

[TOKETMEK]

It looks better, but there are a few bugs in mobile version, which is where I browse this place ~%90 of the time. Wolsk already stated all the bugs I've experienced. These are my only problems anyway, hopefully they'll be fixed soon

[Starz0r]

I don't mean to say that I think the forums look bad, they look great - much better than before. I just feel as though some of the scaling is off and some priorities have been muddled (e.g. I don't know why people's browser and computer data is so important it has to be shown on the side in such a way that inherently creates an amount of dead space after posts that is more often than not larger than the actual posts themselves).

The idea is to allow for people to troubleshoot without having to ask what their system might me, makes my and many other's life easier.

[Derf]

I don't mean to say that I think the forums look bad, they look great - much better than before. I just feel as though some of the scaling is off and some priorities have been muddled (e.g. I don't know why people's browser and computer data is so important it has to be shown on the side in such a way that inherently creates an amount of dead space after posts that is more often than not larger than the actual posts themselves).

The idea is to allow for people to troubleshoot without having to ask what their system might me, makes my and many other's life easier.

Right, okay. But why not just put it on people's actual profile page instead of showing it on the side of posts, where 99% of the time it's unnecessary and just contributes to the problems with the new theme.

Like I said I appreciate the theme and think it's an improvement in most areas, but it seems unfinished. There's grey & black text on grey backgrounds, formatting issues both on mobile and on PC, avatar and post sizes are too elongated, there's too much dead space everywhere.

[Starz0r]

I don't mean to say that I think the forums look bad, they look great - much better than before. I just feel as though some of the scaling is off and some priorities have been muddled (e.g. I don't know why people's browser and computer data is so important it has to be shown on the side in such a way that inherently creates an amount of dead space after posts that is more often than not larger than the actual posts themselves).

The idea is to allow for people to troubleshoot without having to ask what their system might me, makes my and many other's life easier.

Right, okay. But why not just put it on people's actual profile page instead of showing it on the side of posts, where 99% of the time it's unnecessary and just contributes to the problems with the new theme.

Not everyone is always going to be posting on the same OS / Browser. Just efficiency. If it bothers you that much I'll give an option to disable or not make it such a large portion of the Profile Card.

Also the black text on grey background thing is gonna get fixed, I'm going to put some padding behind it so it's not so difficult to read.

[bananaguy12]

I'm not a huge fan of the changes, unfortunately. I think everything takes up too much space which is inefficient when just browsing the forums, and also I don't think the site blends together very well. I liked the simplistic look from before and I think it worked fine. Everything just looks annoyingly bigger now. Also, apparently there are mobile issues which should really be fixed. Maybe I'm just complaining because the site looks so weird compared to before and I just have to get used to it. idk.

EDIT: Also, is it just me or are all the user profile pictures really fuzzy looking?

[Starz0r]

EDIT: Also, is it just me or are all the user profile pictures really fuzzy looking?

Side effect of the theme, it seems I added some accidental JPG compression to the images.

[Kilp]

I'm not a huge fan of the changes, unfortunately. I think everything takes up too much space which is inefficient when just browsing the forums, and also I don't think the site blends together very well. I liked the simplistic look from before and I think it worked fine. Everything just looks annoyingly bigger now. Also, apparently there are mobile issues which should really be fixed. Maybe I'm just complaining because the site looks so weird compared to before and I just have to get used to it. idk.

EDIT: Also, is it just me or are all the user profile pictures really fuzzy looking?

I agree with this, I liked the layout of the previous skin. As others have mentioned, avatars are stretched out and fuzzy looking and posts seem to take up much more space. I'm not saying this layout is particularly bad, though these changes could use improving. If their is another skin option that's similar to the last one then I'll more than likely change to that.