Integrating Vbulletin in a table with menu on the left ? Your thoughts pelase...

[Sharg]

I'm scratching my head as to know if I will include vbulletin in a table or not.
You know like John's own Vb world site:
http://forums.vb-world.net/

see, his forum is included in a table with the site's menu on the left.

Well I hesitate on doing this or have the forum taking all the space available on the page.
Here are the pros and cons of integrating vbulletin into a table with menu on the left or not:

Table+menu on the left:
:)Forums will not "break" the design of the site and will be a continuation
:)Easy for navigation so users know they always have the menu on the left
:(WIll loose display space with the menu on the left (in particular mine being sligthly larger than John's)

-Forums using full page:
:)I like when the thread display is not in a global table, because the download of a thread will display message after message instead of waiting the entire page to be downloaded before displaying.
:)Will use full space display and might display faster
:(Will break with the rest of the site display that has a menu on the left.

So what are your thoughts about this based on your experience ?
Should I make my forum use full page or respect strictly the rest of my site's design and embed it into a table ?

Thanks,

[Me2Be]

I embed my forum into a table so I can have a left nav bar. I use this to promote the features of the rest of my site.

Some things to think about:
is there more to your site than just community?
do you have enough to substantially fill the left navbar without having to resort to 'fluff'

My visitors went nuts when I first cut over to the left navbar - you know how everyone hates change. But after a couple weeks everyone got used to it and now appreciate the ability to find the information on my site. My board only represents about 15% of my page views.

Another benefit that I've received is the ability to break out the members features more on the left sidebar to make it easier for people to get to what they are looking for!

[Sharg]

Yes, thats exactly what i like this left bar: it helps split the forums menus and features and can even integrate an advertising button.
My site IS a community, which means the forums represents 95 % of the traffic....

Thanks for your opinion on this.
Others ?

[Wayne Luke]

Right now our forums represent approximately 45-50% of our traffic. I thought about putting in a navigation menu on the left side but it cramped the feel of the forums at anything less than 1024 X 768. However at that resolution or higher it is great.

I am still looking at ways to integrate better navigation with the main sites and will most likely be integrating a few after I upgrade to v2.

I'll have to see how this works out though because I have three goals in the next year....

More Traffic,
More Revenue,
Paying my Advisors.

[InsideMedia]

Hey Sharg,

I set to the daunting task in the last few days of doing what your talking about with our forums. You can see an example here.

http://forum.startalent.tv

All I did was included the basic layout in the header and the footer since these are used in every template anyways worked out very easy and nicely.

peace

[David Copeland]

Great looking forums.

IDEA:
Most people read from Left to Right,
and most photo layouts are designed
to reduce eye strain by understanding
we begin on the Left side of a page and
read to the right, then return to the next
lower line on the left.

PROBLEM #1:
If a viewer begins reading 1 or 2 inches
in from the left edge because there is a
left Menu or Ad, then his/her eyes begin
to strain towards that far left. We do not
read a book from the left by ignoring the
first one inch of words and letters.

PROBLEM #2:
If a viewer reads from left to right, his/her
eyes will do a return to the far left, and
then jump to the next start point. There
will be a constant urge to go left.

SOLUTION:
Take a look at the following web page,
where the ads appear on the far right:

www.dvdpricesearch.com

http://www.dvdcouponpost.com/

http://www.time.com/time/

Although the choice is a personal decision,
I am looking for samples of VBulletin Forums
that are integrated with the ads either on
both sides, or on the right side.

Is the choice of "right side" simply an html
programming code?

David



[Edited by David Copeland on 01-24-2001 at 02:20 PM]

[Me2Be]

Originally posted by David Copeland
Is the choice of "right side" simply an html
programming code?
[/B]

Yes, I just played with it on my site to see and it seems to work like this (this is real rough).

<table border=0 width=100%><tr><td>main content & body</td><td width=xxx (size of right side>right side content</td></tr></table>

[WildWayz]

If I wanted vB to go into a table, how would I do it?

--James

[InsideMedia]

Start the table in the header template and put whatever you want in there then put close it in the footer template. Hope this helps

peace

[WildWayz]

how about if I wanted a nav bar to the left of the forums? :)

ie


========================
| header
|
========================
| |
| Nav | vBulletin
| Bar |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
========================
| footer
|
========================


(and who says I am no good at art :D)

--James

[InsideMedia]

Same thing..put the design in your header and the end tables and such in the footer :) I did it with mine and it works fine.

ok I figured this was a little to quick. Go ahead and make your design first w/o the forums in them. (ie: tables and such) then just split up the tables where the "forum" frame will be.. (and I don't mean *frames*)

peace

[WildWayz]

ta m8 :)

--James

[Blackjack]

Here is mine

Simplest example for menu on left



<table>
<tr>
<td>Menu left</td>
<td> vB </td>
</tr>
</table>
then put in header


<table>
<tr>
<td>Menu left</td>
<td>
then put in footer


</td>
</tr>
</table>

[David Copeland]

Blackjack,

Why haven't you upgraded to Ver 1.5 ?

I like your layout, too!

David

[Blackjack]

Thanks, it's such a small board and little users, mosty about 20 users, that I haven't wanted to bother with it. I'll most likely do the 2.0.