We are considering giving betaone a facelift, and a new design. I have a concept, but I am hopless at design. When I finish doing something it looks nothing like I want it to.

Here is a very rough sketch of what I have so far.

http://b1beta.zone-mr.ath.cx/forums/

Please post any comments, and I would appreciate it a lot if you guys could help with improving it, or possibly suggesting your own design. If anyone needs webspace to experiment, ill set up a small VDS and give accounts to whoever wants to help collaborate on this project.

Honestly, why?
Are there some though hard-core forum enthusiasts complaining about the B1 look and feel of today?

I still feel reborn since January. It's clean and easy too handle, it's the best version ever for people running with the pics turned off (like I do when I use the old laptop). Personally I don't give a shit about flashy design based on different scripts. A message board should be a messageboard. If I want to play pinball I go and play pinball. Ah, you get it - in my opinion there is no need for a facelift. (And yes, I went there and no, I don't need a sidebar and extra frames.)

imho

Hi Zone,

I like where I think you're going with that design. The deeper colors give it a lot more modern/richer feel. I've got to admit I was never a real big fan of the sidebar (I never use it), but we could script it in pretty easily using layers/javascript if you want it to slide in/out. Maybe I misunderstood your concept though... Do you want the sidebar to always be there instead? Anyway, let me know what you'd like to do and I'm happy to help out any way I can :)

All the best,
E3

Maybe not hard-core enthusiasts, but many people I have spoken to (myself included) would be more in favour of something more modern looking. I am trying to base the design on the 'plex' theme to make it more in-line with the board (beta software).

Of course it's a matter of personal preference and I am not talking about imposing what I like on anyone. IBF has good skinning support and each user can select what skin they preffer. I am certainly not thinking about getting rid of the old one. It will simply be an additional skin people can select, and if the majority of people prefers it, it may become the default.

Who said anything about a flashy design with lots of scripts. So far I do not use a single bit of javascript, and if possible I prefer it to stay like that.

As to images, I certainly use less than this skin (which uses 8 seperate gifs for the border of each section, and 11 just for the title logo. I tried disabling images in my browser and it didnt drastically change the look of my concept design - except one cell table which is too light making text unreadable, but thats easilly fixed. In contrast disabling images here makes the title become a mess of [ x ]'s, and generally everything looks ugly.

That's why you will be able to select which design you prefer. Also notice that nothing is based on frames (as it screws up "open in new window..."). Its all based on standard HTML tables - nothing fancy. As to the sidebar it can be easilly hidden, and the setting will be remembered on a per-user basis. I usually browse on a computer with a hi-res display, and the current theme leaves wasted white chunks on both the left and right.

Sometime I browse from a handheld windows ce device. It chokes on some of the scripts on the frontpage here. It works flawlessly on the mock-up I made. From a technical point of view I am going for simplicity.

How about carrying the theme over onto the individual threads? ATM the rounded graphic above the box's on the main page don't carry through into the individual posts. Other than that it looks pretty damn good- viewing it @ 1600x1200 and bery little of the page is wasted. It may be an idea if the sidebar expanded verticaly no matter how long the page became, so users could view it and fill it up with their own on site links.

Yes, its still unfinished, but thats the plan. I want to apply the 'plex' style theme to all pages, and prefferable buttons and GUI elements too.

If I understand you correctly you mean it should become longer if the page becomes longer. In which case, it does that already in my beta design! The sidebar is always as long as the page. What goes in it will be customizable.

Well, the current design is light blue, and therefore very gay. In fact the old orange design was better, or even the design before the rebirth, which totally sucked, to be honest. The site loads slower and the layout isnt as good as it could be.

The testdesign over there martin, is sadly enough junk. I hate to say both designs are awful, but why not do something like www.freakforum.nu ? Simple, clean and it loads fast.

Ofcourse, another thing that would be great, let people choose from multiple skins.

zone, your design looks great and i can't wait to have it available.

Which site runs slower? The test site that Zone-Mr is hosting or this site?

I don't think i have ever seen this site load as fast, sql querys are down to around 1/10th of the time they were on the other host, and all pages are loaded in less than a second for me.

.unicorn: we can have multiple skins, and i'll recode parts of the front page, so that whichever board skin you pick, the front page will match

nich: that's way too plain, it's just ugly imo

and yeah dog is right, the site has never ran this fast, sql queries are taking a tenth of a second or even less at times