New (I Believe) Forum Style Concept

[CeleronXT]

Green (http://www.forumsector.com/index.php?styleid=15)
Blue (http://www.forumsector.com/index.php?styleid=16)

This is an original (I've never seen it before anyway) forum home concept that my graphics designer came up with a while ago, which uses an icon system for forums. Just wondering what opinions anyone here has on it. Some people on my forum absolutely hate it, while others seem to like it (as I can see, via phpMyadmin, many using it).

[tgillespie]

Its not nearly as practicle as the common forum layout, but is simple and clean. If he could construct it to include the lastest post and include some more descriptive icons, it would work perfect.

[Floris]

I like it! :) Good job, unique and looks good. Because we are not used to it we might think it is confusing, but it is actually quite nice to browser through :)

9 out of 10 on the floris-scale ;)

[ShadyNight]

I can't speak for my members, but Boy, I love it!

Don't suppose there will be such a thing avalible to the general public?? *bats eyelashes all pretty like* kidding! sort of :p

hehe :D

[MrNase]

Iam one of those who hate it :D

[C.Birch]

dont like it, looks to much like erm some kind of basic kids design:S if you get what i mean.

[colicab-d]

Its nice to see a new concept for once, but I think that the way in which the forumhome is presented is a little shabby, its clean and smooth which is good but it needs more.. i think. The other thing is that the forumhome is the first thing you see and although clean the rest of the site isnt and soon it becomes cluttered compared to the forumhome

[Dean C]

Nothing new really. It's just utilising stefans forums in columns hack excessively - besides it looks ugly and detracts from the whole idea of activity in a forum. You'll visit there and have no instant indication of how often people are posting (no info on last post etc).

[AWS]

Nothing new really. It's jus utilising stefans forums in columns hack excessively - besides it looks ugly and detracts from the whole idea of activity in a forum. You'll visit there and have no instant indication of how often people are posting (no info on last post etc).
That was uncalled for. Critizing someones work is ok if you do it a manner that isn't rude. You however were rude. Isn't the first time I've seen you do it either.

I like it. It is clean, fast loading and pleasant on the eyes. Its been a while since we seen any thing original in forum design.

[Chroder]

I'd probably be one to hate it :p

It makes it look like there's nothing there, like it's empty. And there's the forum descriptions and last posts, num threads and posts missing.

[bahbah]

I agree with AWS.

Creativity is stunted by those who mock the new.

and BTW most new visitors to forums, or new forum software, don't care about stats - they care about the reason they clicked on your link. Whether you have this style index.php or the traditional format makes no difference. What does however make a difference is usability for ppl new to this type of forums software.

[Dean C]

That was uncalled for. Critizing someones work is ok if you do it a manner that isn't rude. You however were rude. Isn't the first time I've seen you do it either.

I like it. It is clean, fast loading and pleasant on the eyes. Its been a while since we seen any thing original in forum design.

I'm entitled to express my opinion just as anyone else is here. It wasn't intended to be rude and if you took it that way then my apologies :)

[BillaBongUSA]

I like the concept of presenting each forum as an icon in one row, but as others have said, it could use a little polishing up. I dunno, maybe it would look more organized if there were a background colour behind each row of icons. And I think that it would be neat if the forum icon itself 'lit up' or faded out depending on whether or not it contained new posts, eliminating the need for the envelope icon under each image.

[Chaotic Reality]

I think it's pretty cool.

J.

[CeleronXT]

Nice to see that some people like it. :) I'm not really sure how to make things dim out according to whether or not it's been read. I was planning on putting forum use statistics in a mouseover tooltip type of thing over each icon. I just need a standards compliant way of doing so.

[Scott MacVicar]

No easy ones since Mozilla doesn't support newlines in its title / alt tags.

Might want to make your own with repositioning divs.

[KeithMcL]

It's nice to see a new approach to displaying the forumhome page but it's not my cup of tea. Like others have said... it seems too plain, lacking in information and doesn't instantly show if the community is active or not.

[CeleronXT]

It's nice to see a new approach to displaying the forumhome page but it's not my cup of tea. Like others have said... it seems too plain, lacking in information and doesn't instantly show if the community is active or not.Considering that it's not the default theme, seeing if it's active or not isn't really an issue.

I'm looking into using whatever Outwar.com (I suggest no one using IE attempts to go there) uses for its onmouseover popups (when logged in), which look nice.

[filburt1]

Green (http://www.forumsector.com/index.php?styleid=15)
Blue (http://www.forumsector.com/index.php?styleid=16)

This is an original (I've never seen it before anyway) forum home concept that my graphics designer came up with a while ago, which uses an icon system for forums. Just wondering what opinions anyone here has on it. Some people on my forum absolutely hate it, while others seem to like it (as I can see, via phpMyadmin, many using it).
It is original, but from a web design standpoint, it is not nearly as accessible, informative, or intuitive--the three most important aspects of designing a site.

[TonyG]

Server seems to be down...?

[WichitaRacing]

The horizontal bars that fade at either end DESTROY my eyes. Other than that it's pretty cool.

[Bema Jinn]

I, Personally like it.

it wouldn't fit well on many forums, but it somehow has a place in gaming forums.

Good work :)

[Floris]

I have seen many sites that wanted to have bigger custom icons for specific forums, or a custom category setup for something original. They all ended up with the same type of design, this is quite a new approach and regardless of the pictures used, it is done nice.