Forum Theme Alert

More importantly, made it so that avatars display with a maximum width of 150px.  This makes the forum much more readable on mobile.
 
Well, it still looks big for me testing it on my phone, but it's way better than back then where it's so stretched that it almost fills the screen up.
 
Setting the size any smaller would mess with avatar display on desktop.  This is the best that can be done until I figure out the CSS wizardry that this theme uses.
 
Is there a way to turn off all the white and make it a darker color with lighter writing like the old theme all the white hurts my eyes lol
 
I noticed. As I said in another post, I'm pretty much done with SMF. I've been trolling around here and there on Shoryuken.com and I really like the way their place looks. It's powered by Vanilla, so I'm going to look into that as a possible alternative.

DC
 
Price is always an issue, but frankly, we need it. Complaints pile up, and I only have time to operate the forum - not write one. That's pretty much what SMF expects you to do these days if you want all the goodies. Our community isn't on the level of a professional developer, but we've certainly outgrown the free stuff. It's a tough spot to be in, but them's the rocks and something has to be done.

I did some more homework and one solution has really got my attention - even more than vanilla:

xenforo forum, and hosting it on KnownHost. Xenforo is very pricey (it's 140USD out of the box, and another 50USD for the Resource Manager). KnownHost is 25USD a month for their base plan.

The benefits though would be enormous. Their Resource Manager is outstanding. None of the bloated up and unsupported Tiny portal crap we have to deal with here. It's a simple plug in integrated right into the forum that was actually developed by the main staff. Social networks are integrated. Post searching, lists, and so on. They also have migration services. Even if we couldn't directly migrate, our old posts could be imported over time since the move would be voluntary.

I'm thinking to offset the cost I'd set up a donation box like Lavalit used to have. It would be entirely voluntary - no incentives or any of that.

 
Honestly, if this is what we're going to, then let it be so. I think it's better too if you announce this here in a separate post
 
I haven't decided just yet, it's just what I'm really leaning toward. I think it would be painful at first, like all forum transitions are, but would benefit us in the long run.

DC
 
Just logged in recently, so not sure if the theme's been changed yet, but... the post issue still exists. I can't seem to read some of them, since they appear in strange ways. :/ Here's an image.

[attachment deleted by admin]
 
As long as we're still using SMF, the issue's still there, sort of.  :)

But yeah, whatever the decision of DC would be, as long as it is for the better, I have nothing against it.
 
Sorry for the delayed response, but thought I'd address this:

Bloodbane said:
It happened to me too but I usually just refresh the page and the bug is gone :)
Click to expand...
Weird... I did the same thing, but the bug doesn't seem to go away. I'm using Firefox.

Most of the time I have to manually click "inspect element" and change how the CSS of the page represents the posts. Eventually it gets really cumbersome...
 
Every day I've become just a little bit more fed up with Simple machines Forum. I'm sick of you guys complaining about it and pretty much having my hands tied to do anything.

Sooooo, as mentioned, I think it's time to go pro. I've been researching here and there for a while, and I really like what vbulletin has to offer. They're responsive design ready, have a file plug in and will even do cloud hosting so we can get away from Bluehost.

I'll have to start a donation box like Lavalit used to have, but that shouldn't be a big deal. If every member chipped in a dollar per month, that would more than cover the costs.

My only real worry is that their file manager plug in is third party, but the fact is, there simply isn't a forum package out there I know of that has file sharing capabilities out of the box. If anyone does know of one, I am willing to hear suggestions.

DC
 
Yeah, I think it's time to put this SFM hijinks aside with a more better solution.

Does it have good importing of stuff from here (except for downloads of course because of the freaking TinyPortal)?

I think you've answered the file manager part a bit. I would add something to that though. If that file manager is seamlessly integrated with the third party, then it would be a nice fit.

If you want to retain the files here, I say we should just download them and put them on a server and it would be read only as archives. We don't put in to the new forums except say the tools needed for OpenBOR and the engine itself.

With a newer slate, we then convince them that our file manager could work anywhere around the world with no problems, allowing people to host their mods, tools and what have you in the forums instead of relying on other hosts like we do here currently.
 
Accoring to their documentation, you can import SMF posts using the impex tool. As you said, that won't import all the crap from Tiny Portal, but the Downloads section is pretty messy anyway. I'd probably just have to collect the files and do that part the old fashioned way.

DC
 
Damon Caskey said:
I'd probably just have to collect the files and do that part the old fashioned way.
Click to expand...

I would suggest them archiving though except for the tools and the latest engine, that way only new downloads could be stored in the bin (or do you want to put them still in the File manager).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom