Footy Forum (Soccer)

[mort2412]

Hi all, anyone suggest some improvements for my site www.thejackarmy.net

Ozzy as you have seen it could you recommend anything to me?

 

[Ozzy47]

I would suggest:

1. Find a way to reduce your sideblocks, as it is now it is longer than your forums, leaving a bunch of empty space below the What's going on section.
2. Find a way to get the sideblocks blockhead to match your forums blockhead, black background, white text.
3. Add this mod, http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=245994 it adds space between the sideblocks, like you see on here.

Other than that it looks pretty good to me, nice and clean.

 

[mort2412]

Thanks for that Ozzy will get onto that now, site has been created on a budget, I created the skin from the style generator and used photoshop for my icons, total beginner here.

 

[Ozzy47]

It's not bad at all, those are just a few visual things that bother me on sites, but I have been known to be a bit anal.

 

[mort2412]

It's not bad at all, those are just a few visual things that bother me on sites, but I have been known to be a bit anal.

Fair enough, I've just tried that adding space thing and it's made it look worse #confused

 

[Ozzy47]

That's strange, I have never seen it not work on any styles I have tried it on.

 

[mort2412]

Put the code in the correct template and it didnt seperate the blocks at all like yours, took away the shading so it looked like one big block.

Where would I change the the blockhead colours? is that in the stylevar for the sideblocks?

 

[Max Taxable]

You have a kindofa, sortofa, little bitofa problem with rendering in FF25, dunno if it's other browsers or not but see image where I have the cursor pointing:

Overall impression of the main page is good. I like the dark orange type on black background for the visitor message bit.

It would save you alot of bandwith and a few calls to do away with the four status boxes at the bottom of forumdisplay for visitors - they don't need to know who's viewing the forum, they don't need thread display options, the icon legend or the posting permissions. I put a <if> conditional on these personally, in forumdisplay template. <if condition=”$show[member]“> then close the conditional with</if> at the end of those particular tables where you see them in the template. Pretty sure for vB4 it's actually <vb:if>.

I'm a fan of the vertical "legacy" postbit and am glad to see you're using it. It could use some dressing up though, I'd suggest collapsible user information under the avatar, not just the thanks/likes bit like you have but the whole thing and style it, "More Information" or some such. Also in postbit - visitors don't need the posting rules or who's reading the thread. I'd do away with these everywhere they are displayed for visitors.

Above are just preferences of mine but they do save you alot of calls and bandwidth.

You've done a nice job setting this up and getting it going, kudos!

 

[mort2412]

Hi Max, thanks for the feedback and kudos, I'm a total noob and forum has only been going about 5 weeks

The rendering thingy you mention, it seems to do that on mobile/tablet browsers and also if you make your browser thinner, on normal full screen it seems fine. Any suggestions on fixing this?

The other suggestions I shall look more into those and figure them out one by one. Is there a mod for having the collapsible user info you mention?

Regards

 

[Ozzy47]

Put the code in the correct template and it didnt seperate the blocks at all like yours, took away the shading so it looked like one big block.

Where would I change the the blockhead colours? is that in the stylevar for the sideblocks?

That is probably going to be in your sidebar.css template for each style, you will be looking for some code that looks like this:

#sidebar_container .blocksubhead {
    background:transparent none;
    font-size:{vb:stylevar sidebar_header_fontSize};
    height:{vb:math {vb:stylevar mid_fontSize}*{vb:stylevar line_height} + 2px };
    color: {vb:stylevar sidebar_header_color};
    padding: 5px 6px;
    border:none;
    outline:none;
    font-weight:bold;
}

You will want to play around with the Background till you get it right.

 

[mort2412]

Great thanks Ozzy

 

[Max Taxable]

Hi Max, thanks for the feedback and kudos, I'm a total noob and forum has only been going about 5 weeks

The rendering thingy you mention, it seems to do that on mobile/tablet browsers and also if you make your browser thinner, on normal full screen it seems fine. Any suggestions on fixing this?

The other suggestions I shall look more into those and figure them out one by one. Is there a mod for having the collapsible user info you mention?

Regards

Personally I would just modify the one that's already there for the likes collapse and make it take in the entire postbit info.

The rendering thing - it wouldn't show on mobile. I run my browser not full width at all, only slightly wider than your tables go actually.

 

[mort2412]

thx Max and Ozzy have slowly started on a few of your suggestions

 

[mort2412]

UPDATE

Hi all, I have done some adjustments to the site and would like some more feedback if possible.

Firstly your impression when first accessing the site as a guest, and then as a registered member.

Username - feedback99
Password - password99

Many thanks.