POLL: Theme For Our New Forum - Everyone Take a Vote!

[Evil Hamster]

Personally- I think dark break or silent wave, with an "Elements" theme would work best.

[Evil Hamster]

I have to use a lot of words like "money" and "rich" in the title as well as dollar signs. Hopefully that will make him read/reply faster, and not get picked up by his spam detector

You think as a native speaker.
For us foreigners, most emails written in English with "rich" in the title go directly to the trash bin.

Actually, if we could find an Italian speaker willing to write the email for us, it would probably give us the best chances to catch him.

Actually I send those straight into the trash too- even if they make it past the spam filter

[Evil Hamster]

The time we save in not designing the whole thing ourselves, we can use to add content and features on our forums, which is always more important than eye candy.

We probably have a LOT of time ahead
Did you send your email to Zanzarino, SG?

I've written most of it but I haven't sent it yet.

When I emailed him, it took 3 weeks before he even read it.

[Gir]

DS-Natural fits the game the best imo.

[jmizzle7]

I like DS-Natural, Overview, and DarkBreak, although Silent Wave was close behind.

[Scaredgirl]

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EDIT: Seems like most of the template demos are down at the moment. They are probably updating templates. Here is  the link: http://demo.dzinerstudio.com/
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Here are 7 different 100% FREE forum themes made by a professional design studio. As you can see they are light years ahead of this monstrosity we have now.

These all use the new SMF 2 (RC2) version which has many more cool options than this 1.1 we are using now.

When you look at the themes, don't concentrate too much on the images and colors because they can be replaced. Instead click the links, browse the forum and try to get a general "feel" of the forum. Ask yourself these questions:

A) Is the overall layout appealing to the eye?
B) Is the overall layout easy to use?

1. X-Mas (http://demo.dzinerstudio.com/smf2/index.php?theme=9)

2. DS-Natural (http://demo.dzinerstudio.com/smf2/index.php?theme=8)

3. DarkBreak (http://demo.dzinerstudio.com/smf2/index.php?theme=7)

4. Outline (http://demo.dzinerstudio.com/smf2/index.php?theme=6)

5. Overview (http://demo.dzinerstudio.com/smf2/index.php?theme=4)

6. Mystic Jade (http://demo.dzinerstudio.com/smf2/index.php?theme=3)

7. Silent Wave (http://demo.dzinerstudio.com/smf2/index.php?theme=2)

*** if you open more than one at the same time in tabs, forum links become bugged and the theme changes ***

Everyone will vote their 3 favorite themes.

After voting, please post your thoughts on why you voted like you did.

After we've decided what theme we are going to go with, next step will be me building a test version of that forum. Then we will modify it with Elements related graphics, colors and all kinds of cool mods like chat client.

Also keep in mind that the theme can be later changed at any time so this vote is by no means "final".

[Scaredgirl]

My favorite is DarkBreak

Tied at second and third place: OverView  and Silent Wave

[Scaredgirl]

I voted "none".
The top menus from Cargo or DSv4 look 10 times cooler than any of the above:
http://demo.dzinerstudio.com/smf2/index.php?theme=12
http://demo.dzinerstudio.com/smf2/index.php?theme=13

I know they're not free but I'm sure we can reproduce their effects easily when we design our own theme.

Yep, those commercial ones are pretty damn cool. One of the best looking forums Ive ever seen. Those guys really know their stuff.

As for this "designing our own theme".. while it's good to have some customizing, I don't think we should design the whole thing from scratch. Instead we should take one theme as a template and just make slight modifications to it. The time we save in not designing the whole thing ourselves, we can use to add content and features on our forums, which is always more important than eye candy.

I went ahead and installed a alpha version. You can find it here: http://elements.hostei.com/index.php?topic=2.0

As you can see it looks like crap. This is because the design studio guys haven't done RC2 yet (only RC1) so the forum is broken, especially the front page. I'm not going to waste time fixing it since the design studio guys are doing it as we speak.

I took some screenshots from the game to give it some Elements feel. Oh, and I used the DarkBreak as you can see.

This is a Alpha 0.1 and it's nothing like the real version is going to be. I just made it for us to test things.

[Scaredgirl]

The time we save in not designing the whole thing ourselves, we can use to add content and features on our forums, which is always more important than eye candy.

We probably have a LOT of time ahead
Did you send your email to Zanzarino, SG?

I've written most of it but I haven't sent it yet.

[Scaredgirl]

I have to use a lot of words like "money" and "rich" in the title as well as dollar signs. Hopefully that will make him read/reply faster, and not get picked up by his spam detector

You think as a native speaker.
For us foreigners, most emails written in English with "rich" in the title go directly to the trash bin.

Actually, if we could find an Italian speaker willing to write the email for us, it would probably give us the best chances to catch him.

"NEW ELEMENTS FORUM - mucho dinero for you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

[Scaredgirl]

All I ask is that we be able to choose a theme from a list. Not have only one available. Once the theme's have been up for awhile, you can remove the ones no one is using and try out some more.

I was going to mention this; a few forums have a drop down list to allow user-chosen themes.  I don't suppose there's support for more than one theme with the architecture you are using?

We're going to have one main theme with "Elements look" and then bunch of other themes for those who don't like the main theme.

Building multiple themes with Element logo, pictures, etc. is a waste of time. I'm hoping the final "main" version will be so good that 99% of users will use it.

[Scaredgirl]

Odd urls tend to get borked on forums. Here's a different rendition: http://tinyurl.com/yg4mz9m

None there that stood out, though I mostly just looked at the thumbnails.

Ah it seems so. I deleted my post.

Yes, most of those looked pretty bad. There's a big difference when a theme is made by a professional, like those 7 in the poll.