Topic #320: soo.. this place

[NDSC_Micro-Mario64]

if this here is still alive and you guys (or anybody) plans to try and make it work, there's some improvements you can make.

first, is making the layout more accessible and perhaps also more pleasant for the eye.

of the blaring issues I see, I'll name a few.

-dark blue fonts in front of dark red backgrounds
this makes it hard to read. I understand the dark blue font is meant for white portions of the page, but the bits of it that display in front of red ones are not readable comfortably.

-the forum list is HUGE.
there's certainly forums you don't need among these. remember, simple is best and much more convenient. this is by far the biggest issue.
you, as a new user, don't really know which forum to post in. forums for general chat (non-games) should also be at the top of the list for convenience. at least the announcements and introductions forums are, why not the remaining others as well?
you can try to reduce the amount of forums you got by removing the ones nobody uses or is likely to use. you can also combine multiple forums into one and thus save some space.
once you're done, you can always adjust the remaining few if need be.

-huge fonts and images in signature
this is mostly aimed towards Tiger21820, but please, please don't do that.
it makes it hard to distinguish what is post content and what isn't, and pointlessly pushes the next post further down the page, making reading several posts on a single page much longer than it needs to be. it's a big turnoff when trying to enjoy reading anything here, which's not good because, well, that's the whole point of the site isn't it? you should be careful not to ruin user experience.

-those HOME, CALENDAR, FAQ, etc buttons
I'm not sure what you tried to do with them, but they're hard to read (especially the FAQ one) and frankly they don't look great. I'd advise you either use stock (aka regular) text for this or get a graphist (even somebody like me can do this much) to make decent and readable buttons.

[NDSC_Tiger21820]

This forum is basically dead.

Forumotion has an AWFUL forum management system. It is almost impossible to change anything around here.

Even as an administrator, I have very little power to change many aspects.

It's all because it was...

*sigh*

HOSTED.

Really, this forum is the property of Forumotion. Not mine. I have no access to the root admin features that would be accessible on a self hosted forum. With all that in mind, I feel that trying to improve this forum is not worth it. Especially since the host could potentially shut down and this forum would disappear along with it! The last 2 forums I had no longer exist because the servers that hosted them were shut down! This is the third forum I have created (and the longest living one too! Even some of the posts were not updated from the last one ant that was over 5 years ago! They still reflect the last forum I had!) and it could be a matter of time before this one is next! :

Believe me, if I was hosting this with my own server (which... unfortunately... I don't currently have the means to be able to do so... :) this place could be looking SO much better, and I would have TOTAL control of it too!

It is because of the limits that Forumotion (as well as other forum hosting services) places on their users, there is VERY little of the phpBB settings they can actually change.
The forum software this forum uses is phpBB , you can actually download your own copy of phpBB from the website for free, and let me tell you, I WISH it was that simple to set up! It's not!

Unless the forum activity reaches a certain quota specified by me, any changes are moot. This forum currently has absolutely no support here!

So to answer your questions or suggestions:

1. Done!

2. Done!

3. No, they're staying!

4. Not too bad.

5. Done!

Anyway, I am sorry about the poor quality of the forum, I wish I could host my own forum that I can fully customize freely to everyone's liking, but until then, this will have to do for now...

[NDSC_Tiger21820]

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