Forum Update

[Marky7890]

Hello everyone,
I have finally decided to give the forum an update. Going from PHPBB 3.0.11 released in 2012, to 3.3.11 released this October.

This also has a much bigger area for the main forum banners, and the height of which can be changed fairly easily.

There is this default dark theme as well as a light theme by the same creator, which can be changed by clicking the dropdown menu on your username in the top right corner under the main banner then on User Control Panel > Board Preferences > Board Style.

There may be a few changes to icons and colours over the next few days or weeks.

Mark

[robd]

Hi Mark,

Liking the new forum format, dark theme is great, I wish the N3V forum could have a dark theme!

Cheers,

Rob.

[PFX]

It looks well Mark. The dark theme is very good indeed.

[bolivar]

Dark theme keeps on staying even after editing the board preference to light scheme. Fixed. Did not submit preferences.

[Marky7890]

Not sure why that would be.

[robd]

Not sure why that would be.

Works OK here in firefox, looks much better in dark though!

Rob.

[re57k]

Hello Mark, I'm loving the new look of the forum, though it may take some time for me to fully adapt to this new UI. I may be younger than a lot of folks here, but I still find myself head scratching at how I'm supposed to use social media and whatnot.

Also, sorry for going off-topic a little bit, but most of the user-uploaded images does not seem to load for me, the ones hosted elsewhere seem to be fine though, just the ones hosted directly on the site. Is this a side effect of the upgrade or?

Cheers.

[Marky7890]

Thanks for letting me know about that. It seems the files got corrupted, luckily my host keeps daily backups for a month, so restored the attachments folder from earlier in the month.

[JBVector]

It looks great Mark! Great to see an update here as well.

[james73]

Looks good.

As for the banner - I used to have a bit of code that would change the banner to a different image from a pre-determined array each time you went to a new page or reloaded a page, although that was in phpBB2. I never got around to testing it in phpBB3. Kept things interesting.

[Mightyena]

It's a very big change, so I suspect I will get used to it in time.

A couple of suggestions though:

- the unread posts icons are much more difficult to distinguish now, since they turn orange, which is used for titles, usernames, and other accents, instead of a colour that is not used as part of the main site design

- the page no longer adjusts to the width of the monitor, meaning large images are made smaller, and on widescreen monitors the page is about 50% white space

[Marky7890]

Looks good.

As for the banner - I used to have a bit of code that would change the banner to a different image from a pre-determined array each time you went to a new page or reloaded a page, although that was in phpBB2. I never got around to testing it in phpBB3. Kept things interesting.

Thanks James,
The banner url is stored in the CSS stylesheet rather than the page, so not sure if that would work. Also the banner changes every month voted by members in the monthly Screenshot competitions.

Mark

[Marky7890]

It's a very big change, so I suspect I will get used to it in time.

A couple of suggestions though:

- the unread posts icons are much more difficult to distinguish now, since they turn orange, which is used for titles, usernames, and other accents, instead of a colour that is not used as part of the main site design

- the page no longer adjusts to the width of the monitor, meaning large images are made smaller, and on widescreen monitors the page is about 50% white space

Yes, I've been thinking about changing the read/unread icons as well to make them stand out more. Also the wide changes when zoomed in. to adjust to the screen. I may make the layout a bit wider. Although that would mess up the banner image as well.

Mark

[Marky7890]

The icons have been updated to the old set. Although unread topics are now orange.
You will probably need to clear your browser cache for the updated ones to appear.

Mark

[paulsw2]

Great looking new forum Mark. With my old eyes, I definitely prefer the dark theme!

Paul