02-11-2024, 03:49 AM
I love the MyBB forum software, which this site is powered by, but I find the out-of-the-box layout, look, and design very outdated. I also have an issue with it not being mobile-friendly.
As some of you know, I started using MyBB back in 2014 when I started my own QB64 community. I fell in love with how easy it is for me to modify and the powerful add-ons you get it for it.
However, back in those days, we were using v1.6.x and things were different. Today, we are in the v1.8.x (1.8.37 for my BASIC forum; my web hosting provider automatically updates the version for me so I don't have to deal with it.). However, the out-of-the-box download still is not mobile-friendly, which is saddening, and the look is still obsolete in my opinion.
Thankfully, there are a few mobile-friendly themes you can get for MyBB, and the one I chose had a fairly decent layout and design, though I hated the colors red and blue colors it uses. As such, I had to modify the theme to my liking. I wanted a nice color palette that was psychologically pleasing to most people and cultures, and after a bit of reading (research) I saw that green was still a good common color that promoted all kinds of (supposed) positive emotions. So, I opened up Adobe Photoshop and worked on a green palette.
I thought I had the colors I wanted until I read an article that had a single green button. I liked the green color and created a whole new palette based on it.
One of the great things I love about the new theme is that it removed most of the fluff from the index page and replaced it with a category list on the left and a recent thread list on the right, as you can see in the following screenshot.
I find this layout a lot more pleasing than the out-of-the-box one that comes with MyBB and most other forum software.
The out-of-the-box look and layout for a thread's posts is absolutely an eye-sore in my opinion. The theme I am using separates each post into a user-friendly look and feel, as you can see in the following screenshot:
Posting a message in the out-of-the-box MyBB is an eye-sore as well, in my opinion, and I don't believe there is ever a true need for the post icon or even emoticons. So, I removed them from my forum completely. I also removed the thread subject line on the reply page because it should never be changed. The "post options" and "thread subscriptions" are placed in a separate area that the user has to open (like a "show me" button). Here's a screenshot of a post page on the BASIC forum:
The user's list has also been updated to a more modern look as well, as you can see in the following screenshot:
As you may have seen in a previous screenshot, for admins, there is a "purge spammer" link that allows the admin to delete the user, all their posts, all their DM's, and everything else with a single click. Here's a small screenshot to show that section:
While my forum is open to the public, I still have some minor tweaks to make. The more the forum is used, the more things I seem to find to "fix".But, overall, I am very happy with how well the forum came out.
As some of you know, I started using MyBB back in 2014 when I started my own QB64 community. I fell in love with how easy it is for me to modify and the powerful add-ons you get it for it.
However, back in those days, we were using v1.6.x and things were different. Today, we are in the v1.8.x (1.8.37 for my BASIC forum; my web hosting provider automatically updates the version for me so I don't have to deal with it.). However, the out-of-the-box download still is not mobile-friendly, which is saddening, and the look is still obsolete in my opinion.
Thankfully, there are a few mobile-friendly themes you can get for MyBB, and the one I chose had a fairly decent layout and design, though I hated the colors red and blue colors it uses. As such, I had to modify the theme to my liking. I wanted a nice color palette that was psychologically pleasing to most people and cultures, and after a bit of reading (research) I saw that green was still a good common color that promoted all kinds of (supposed) positive emotions. So, I opened up Adobe Photoshop and worked on a green palette.
I thought I had the colors I wanted until I read an article that had a single green button. I liked the green color and created a whole new palette based on it.
One of the great things I love about the new theme is that it removed most of the fluff from the index page and replaced it with a category list on the left and a recent thread list on the right, as you can see in the following screenshot.
I find this layout a lot more pleasing than the out-of-the-box one that comes with MyBB and most other forum software.
The out-of-the-box look and layout for a thread's posts is absolutely an eye-sore in my opinion. The theme I am using separates each post into a user-friendly look and feel, as you can see in the following screenshot:
Posting a message in the out-of-the-box MyBB is an eye-sore as well, in my opinion, and I don't believe there is ever a true need for the post icon or even emoticons. So, I removed them from my forum completely. I also removed the thread subject line on the reply page because it should never be changed. The "post options" and "thread subscriptions" are placed in a separate area that the user has to open (like a "show me" button). Here's a screenshot of a post page on the BASIC forum:
The user's list has also been updated to a more modern look as well, as you can see in the following screenshot:
As you may have seen in a previous screenshot, for admins, there is a "purge spammer" link that allows the admin to delete the user, all their posts, all their DM's, and everything else with a single click. Here's a small screenshot to show that section:
While my forum is open to the public, I still have some minor tweaks to make. The more the forum is used, the more things I seem to find to "fix".But, overall, I am very happy with how well the forum came out.
The Joyful Programmer has changed call signs. The Joyful Programmer is now called "AstroCosmic Systems".