My next theme

psychobunny

Maybe you might find some inspiration here: http://www.rockettheme.com/phpbb/styles

It's still the traditional forum look, but a more modern looking approach to it. Would be nice to see a proper traditional design going

Tanner

@psychobunny I really like this design http://demo.rockettheme.com/live/phpbb/index.php?style=117/

a_5mith

I'm looking at the mixitup plugin now. Shouldn't be too tricky, just need to make the page and add some styling.

esiao

You can find some inspiration here aswell
http://themeforest.net/category/forums

Tanner

This is what I have so far, let me know what you think and about anything that I should change.

vertical preview.png

esiao

@Tanner In term of UX it's nice, maybe the dar grey bar under the header should have verticaly aligned text.
In term of UI it's too monochromatic and sad but if you plan in changing the colors accordingly to one defined at the start it could be very nice.
For instance I choose pink all the black is replaced by pink and the greys with a lighter pink color. (just an idea).

I don't feel like the shoutbox is at the right place. (Or you need to get rid of the margins or add some on top).

And that Avant Garde Logo is not right.

Tanner

I'm thinking of using #0E887E as the base color for this theme instead of the pink. Will upload screenshots of it later without the ~avant garde~ logo

a_5mith

@Tanner said:

I'm thinking of using #0E887E as the base color for this theme instead of the pink. Will upload screenshots of it later without the ~avant garde~ logo

The closest websafe colour to that is #033, so I'd go with that if you want consistency.

julian

People still do web safe colours? I thought that went out a long time ago...

a_5mith

@julian Not usually (can't say I do), but it goes with the old style theme.

Tanner

I suppose you're right haha

psychobunny

Wow you're quick. Looks good man, great start.

esiao

I was joking for the pink color, cyan is a good one.
But what I meant is that base color is user defined (why not through ACP) like this you could have a theme that suit everyone. Or if not via ACP just by changing one var.

Tanner

@esiao That's what I've got now, after some deliberation. There will be a default colour of course but the color will be able to be changed by altering the @brand-primary variable.

There's still a tricky thing I'm trying to fix where the footer starts at the end of sidebar, but the sidebar doesn't always go the length of the main body. I put "custom links" in the sidebar to push it down but not everyone will want those. Would providing instructions on setting the height of the last widget be sufficient?

Edit: Scratch that, changed the height variable on the category area and fixed it!

Tanner

Here's another preview of it so far with the colour changes, vertically centered text, and fixed descriptions:

vertical preview.png

esiao

@Tanner Put the text on the photo in white
That's nice so far, for the header image have you planned to be able to change it via ACP ? I'm asking this because my theme will use a header image + another feature linked to that and I'm wondering if I do a plugin or just part of a plugin in my theme.

Tanner

@esiao You'd do that with an additional plugin, not in the theme itself. I'm considering doing that with this one but it might be too complex for a theme that's meant to be old-school

Edit: as far as I know, but I could be wrong.

esiao

@Tanner Well themes are plugins so you could do it with a theme.

Tanner

@esiao True, true

Either way, I'm not sure how to implement that feature into this theme. I'm thinking for the first version you can just upload a bg.png yourself to /static/images in order to change it.

esiao

@Tanner Well I'll try to figure it out for my theme, I think uploading and using a file is simple what will be a bit more complex in my case is rotating between images (I know how to do it tho).
Maybe start this this week-end.