Vote for your favorite Board in vBulletin Board of the Month - January 2004

[s.molinari]

Hi all,

This is a new year and a new contest. What is different this year? We will be giving away prizes for the winners. I hope this will add even more incentive for those board owners to try and win!:)

I hope to be able to announce the prizes very shortly. Until then, please look at/ investigate all the nominees before you vote. Good luck to all and may the best board win.

Scott

Voting guide lines
1. This month only 5 nominees are up for voting.

2. The person voting may judge a board on his or her own personal criteria. So what makes a board worth voting for, is up to each individual voter. Comments as to why or why not a person votes for a board are welcome as long as the comments are constructive in nature.

3. A board could be disqualified or lose votes when:
- the owner or any other person rallies for votes. This does not include mentioning just the fact that the board is in the contest. You may also point out "features" in this thread.

- the owner or any other person adds more than three users to their "Admins" list in the Member's area. Be aware that the userids are saved with the poll votes and these userids can be bumped up against the "admins" list that vb.com has on record. That means this type of cheating can be caught, so don't even think about doing it.

- the style of the board is changed sometime during the month of voting. The board's style must stay the same throughout the month.

- the board must stay active for the whole month.

- the board must not be changed to another software.


4. *New* If you are a new member please do not vote if your registration isn't over 30 days old. Votes from members registered within 30 days prior to the start of the poll will not be counted. This is not reflected in the poll but I will let everyone know if some votes are discounted.

5. Do not post accusations of cheating or immoral conduct. Anyone who has a grief should send me a PM.

6. As a last request: Please write only positive comments. If you must write something negative please add a suggestion on how what you don't like may be improved. Thanks.

If you have any more opinions/ ideas for other guidelines or opinions on these guidelines, please feel free to post them.

[Asterik]

i like the colors of 2spoemas.com :) they're easy on the eyes and its customized well.

[Zachery]

what i want to know is how http://www.steven-seagal.net/forum/ got picked over some of the other sites, regardless of it having a portal

[Floris]

I picked Trackpads.com because it was the one that stayed open the longest in my browser.

[Zachery]

i think trackpads forumhome is way to large, but thats just me ^^

[trackpads]

i think trackpads forumhome is way to large, but thats just me ^^
Size does matter ;-)

[s.molinari]

what i want to know is how http://www.steven-seagal.net/forum/ got picked over some of the other sites, regardless of it having a portal
They are picked at random and I believe it was Wayne who seconded them with his holiday "I will second all the sites mentioned" post. So blame him.:p;):D

Scott

[Zachery]

that would have goten me a 4th ;D

[Chris Gwynne]

It's kinda hard to vote for Steven-Seagal.net as it's down; DNS.

Also, Unreal Fans is closed off to guests :rolleyes:

So I vote http://www.2spoemas.com/foros/ It's a good customized style, clean looking and the colors are easy on the eyes. :)

[Zachery]

for steven-segal.net that is



adrive for windows xp try
run > cmd > ipconfig /flushdns

:) then try again

[Craigr]

what i want to know is how http://www.steven-seagal.net/forum/ got picked over some of the other sites, regardless of it having a portal
I jokingly added it. :D It is basically just the default vb3 gamma layout.

I'm working on customizing it more soon.

Craig

[trackpads]

I think its fine, plus Steven Segal and a Panda? Who couldnt love it? (My daughter gave that specific picture a big thumbs up BTW ;-)

Anyway, its not just a design contest, its about the site as a whole. If it were strictly a design contest then we would all load up on some cool skins and have a skinning contest ;-)

[blindchild02]

wow...

who nominated these??
the only 2 that should be in there is trackpads and 2spoemas ... the other 2 are barely even edited :\

[Dan]

i love the Egclerics website :D I'm a little biased though as I use to play EG... but it is really nice looking.

[Zachery]

well the style must remain the same till the end of the month now

[sock]

i'd have to go with trackpads.com, big site, good work :)

[trackpads]

Thanks!!

[good2laugh]

Trackpads - blew me away and gets my vote. Sure wish I was creative enough to do something even half as good as this. Nice work. :)

BTW - it's good to see there is a Steven Segal board out there.

[AWS]

wow...

who nominated these??
the only 2 that should be in there is trackpads and 2spoemas ... the other 2 are barely even edited :\
What does "barely even edited mean"?
A board doesn't have to have a graphics intense, slow loading site to qualify. In fact it's rather refreshing to see, in the last 2 months, forums win that don't take 3 days to load.
All nominations go into a hat after they are seconded. Read this thread again and you'll see that Wayne seconded all forums that were nominated as a Christmas present.

BTW, my vote went for http://www.2spoemas.com/foros/

[trackpads]

I agree.

[Elmer]

Thanks for your votes!! hope to remain the same at the end of this month :)

though luck for the others nominated every one have done a good job styling or maintaining their sites. I think that every effort to maintain a forum deserve to be honored ;)

Again, good look everyone ;)

[Ryan McBain]

I cant really vote, I think we should wait till people really start hacking away at their boards.

[Dean C]

Well the steven segal site is down :) My vote won't to foros latinas - excellent use of simplicity and elegance :)!

[trackpads]

I cant really vote, I think we should wait till people really start hacking away at their boards.

I love your signature BTW! Can I put that image on my site?

[Zachery]

What does "barely even edited mean"?
A board doesn't have to have a graphics intense, slow loading site to qualify. In fact it's rather refreshing to see, in the last 2 months, forums win that don't take 3 days to load.
All nominations go into a hat after they are seconded. Read this thread again and you'll see that Wayne seconded all forums that were nominated as a Christmas present.

BTW, my vote went for http://www.2spoemas.com/foros/i think that to make it into the nomiations they should AT least have a differnt set of colors, after that im not going to aruge much but they have a default style. its not even modified >.<

hey my site isnt bogged down with heavy greaphics


As I've said many times before VERY nice site....

Also as we discussed that image optimization is crazy.. Did you know that other than the header, his images are from .06 kilbobytes to .2 kilobytes? Nice job Faranth!

Regards,
Patrick

[AWS]

No where in the rules does it say "nominee must have a style other than the default".
This, afterall, is vbulletin of month and not vbulletin style of the month.
Community should matter more than style. Unfortunately that is not the case. If the forum isn't eyecandy it doesn't get a second and if it does get a second no one votes for it.
The great thing was the last 2 winners have great communities and don't have a heavy graphics laden style. I'm sure that will change now that vb3 is near. We will once again see the slow loading eyecandy sites take the place of great communities that lack an eyecandy style.

[blindchild02]

i really hope your childish poke at graphic heavy forums wasnt pointed in my direction, because my forums doesnt take 3 days to load....

[Zachery]

No where in the rules does it say "nominee must have a style other than the default".
This, afterall, is vbulletin of month and not vbulletin style of the month.
Community should matter more than style. Unfortunately that is not the case. If the forum isn't eyecandy it doesn't get a second and if it does get a second no one votes for it.
The great thing was the last 2 winners have great communities and don't have a heavy graphics laden style. I'm sure that will change now that vb3 is near. We will once again see the slow loading eyecandy sites take the place of great communities that lack an eyecandy style.
yes but usualy a good community also has a failry nice style OTHER than default

[trackpads]

Ot but does my site take a long time to load?

[RixiuS]

blind, EGClerics has been modified alot with customized graphics, you should look at the whole site too (their postbit is customized a bit too;as well as many other things)

[safiel]

Trackpad's style is "adapted" from a postnuke free theme. I like originiality.

I go with eqclerics. Looks like a lot of work went into it. 2spoemas is nice too;)

[peterska2]

http://www.2spoemas.com/foros/

this one gets my vote. I found it nice and relaxing to look at and very easy to navigate around. Loading speed was excellent.

All together a job well done I say :)

I liked the other skins they had available as well. Nothing over powering in any of them.

[AWS]

i really hope your childish poke at graphic heavy forums wasnt pointed in my direction, because my forums doesnt take 3 days to load....
No it's for anyone that has a forum with loads of graphics that take 3 days to load if on a modem.
Maybe your forum loads fast for you, but, on dialup it took 3.6 minutes to load for me. The index page is 106KB.
By contrast the winners of the last 2 months had index size of
43KB - vbulletin.nl
56KB - tecktalkforums.com
I have a laptop using dialup to test the sites I put online. Just how many users will wait that long for a page to load?

It's no wonder that most heavy graphics sites don't have a large userbase.

BTW, it's not a childess poke, but, you could take it that way if the truth hurts.

[Zachery]

did you take a look at mien?

[sabret00the]

not that anyone cares but IMO for a style contest only the last two boards deserved to be there and Foros Latinos just tipped it as i liked that postbit better, was great work by the admins over at FL and EQC i hope to see EQC up here again to claim a later win :)

[trackpads]

not that anyone cares but IMO for a style contest only the last two boards deserved to be there and Foros Latinos just tipped it as i liked that postbit better, was great work by the admins over at FL and EQC i hope to see EQC up here again to claim a later win :)
FYI there is already a forum for Style contest at vb.org. the site itself, your vote is based on your individual opinion, why everyone concetrates on the style etc is beyond me. For example while my style may look simple I had to do that to get it to cross over the many different areas and scripts of my entire site. I even integrated my VB so that people logging into my phpBB sites had to register in VB.

IMO a strictly 'style only' contest is like judging the proverbial book by its proverbial cover.

-Jason

[s.molinari]

Again, just to remind every one why the quality of some of the sites is a bit "weak" this month. Our good intentioned Mod Wayne seconded a whole slew of boards as a christmas present. So that's why some of the "lesser modified" boards got in as nominations.

Scott

[Dean C]

Any news on the prize Scott? I feel bitter that 2 of my designs won and now we can't get a prize again :(?

[s.molinari]

The prize won't be anything of really great value. Just something to show appreciation and along the lines of a gift from CafePress.com. We had to pick a date to start with the prizes and the beginning of the year is IMHO the best time. You'll be able to get your site nominated later this year and I bet you'll have a good chance to win....again.;) So please don't be bitter.

Scott

[sabret00the]

FYI there is already a forum for Style contest at vb.org. the site itself, your vote is based on your individual opinion, why everyone concetrates on the style etc is beyond me. For example while my style may look simple I had to do that to get it to cross over the many different areas and scripts of my entire site. I even integrated my VB so that people logging into my phpBB sites had to register in VB.

IMO a strictly 'style only' contest is like judging the proverbial book by its proverbial cover.

-Jasonnot to be funny but you're indeedy talking ****, look at what this thread is called and in what forums it's based, the whole point of BotM is too vote on who made their board look best, look at the past winners, i'm sorry that i felt your board fell short of the mark but that's life, you now have the opportunity to come back and redeem yourself in a better attempt, personally i think your board is pretty decent but it's just not a winner in comparison to that of the two i mentioned before.

as for a style contest go and read the index of vb.org and stop bring up irrelevance, it's annoying :o

for anyone to be able to judge your site on content and functionality they'd have to have been a member for a whee while and given how many boards get thrown in at the nominations phase it's an impracticallity, if you want your board judged on content start a new contest but being that this is indeed a style contest and that some folk actually busted their guts to have something working right and looking suberb just be grateful that you got to this stage :)

[trackpads]

"2. The person voting may judge a board on his or her own personal criteria. So what makes a board worth voting for, is up to each individual voter. Comments as to why or why not a person votes for a board are welcome as long as the comments are constructive in nature."

What part of that do you not understand? The whole point of this is NOT who looks the best but whatever anyone thinks is the reason they like it. The contest is called VBOTM not VBOTM Styl;e Contest. Otherwise we could all just go to a Photoshop website and compete on who can waste the most time making the best looking buttons or something else useless.

Content is what keeps a site up, not a slick interface that took someone 70 hours with a design program.

Also, did you notice the part about being negative or am I the first to point that out to you?

[Wayne Luke]

They are picked at random and I believe it was Wayne who seconded them with his holiday "I will second all the sites mentioned" post. So blame him.:p;):D

Scott
Hey now... only two forums out of the ones I seconded were not seconded before that.

[trackpads]

Also, I dont think any site up there should be called "weak" the people who run them are happy with them. Its actually insulting.

[Wayne Luke]

i really hope your childish poke at graphic heavy forums wasnt pointed in my direction, because my forums doesnt take 3 days to load....
It sure doesn't but a coffee break is good now and then.

[sabret00the]

"2. The person voting may judge a board on his or her own personal criteria. So what makes a board worth voting for, is up to each individual voter. Comments as to why or why not a person votes for a board are welcome as long as the comments are constructive in nature."

What part of that do you not understand? The whole point of this is NOT who looks the best but whatever anyone thinks is the reason they like it. The contest is called VBOTM not VBOTM Styl;e Contest. Otherwise we could all just go to a Photoshop website and compete on who can waste the most time making the best looking buttons or something else useless.

Content is what keeps a site up, not a slick interface that took someone 70 hours with a design program.

Also, did you notice the part about being negative or am I the first to point that out to you?your queried me and i answered if in being honest you feel i'm being negative then fair enough, as you said "Comments as to why or why not a person votes for a board are welcome as long as the comments are constructive in nature." i beleive i done that before you started kicking up a fuss, i'm sure if i'm guilty of violating that rule then you must be guilty of " 3. A board could be disqualified or lose votes when:- the owner or any other person rallies for votes. This does not include mentioning just the fact that the board is in the contest. You may also point out "features" in this thread." with this (http://www.vbulletintemplates.com/mods/showthread.php?t=5119).

[Wayne Luke]

not to be funny but you're indeedy talking ****, look at what this thread is called and in what forums it's based, the whole point of BotM is too vote on who made their board look best, look at the past winners, i'm sorry that i felt your board fell short of the mark but that's life, you now have the opportunity to come back and redeem yourself in a better attempt, personally i think your board is pretty decent but it's just not a winner in comparison to that of the two i mentioned before.
I am actually trying to get the forum named to "Forum Showcase". I think everyone that is complaining about Design here is selling the other's short. If it were all about design, Yahoo's Groups and forums wouldn't be getting a billion posts a week.

A good strong board is about community. That is why we are here and that should be the overriding criteria of this contest. If the design leads to community then it is a defining characteristing. Half the forums nominated here, you can't even see what the topic is let alone decide how active it is because the graphics are totally unrelated.

Here is what I base sites on when I vote (in order of importance):

1) Content of the posts. Are they friendly? Do people get along? Are the conversations interesting?

2) Usability. Can I read the text? Can I determine what the text on the buttons are or do I have to guess? Just a note here: Any text anywhere less than 10 pixels is an automatic disqualifier in my book.

3) Is the admin active in the community? Does they listen to the members? Are they open-minded or is it their way or the highway?

4) Are staff prominent and is there sufficient coverage for the number of members.

5) Does it load in 5 seconds or less? And yes I have DSL.

6) Does the theme fit the website's topic?

7) Other amenities such as portal, articles and the like.

By now people should realize that looks are shallow and life is more meaningful than that.

[Zachery]

i do take a look into the other aspects, however i do think that they should have some other style than a default unless it really does fit their site

[trackpads]

Posted by: sabret00the

your queried me and i answered if in being honest you feel i'm being negative then fair enough, as you said "Comments as to why or why not a person votes for a board are welcome as long as the comments are constructive in nature." i beleive i done that before you started kicking up a fuss, i'm sure if i'm guilty of violating that rule then you must be guilty of " 3. A board could be disqualified or lose votes when:- the owner or any other person rallies for votes. This does not include mentioning just the fact that the board is in the contest. You may also point out "features" in this thread." with this (http://www.vbulletintemplates.com/mods/showthread.php?t=5119).



You really, really need to read before you post. I didnt violate squat. I highly doubt anyone read that and thought "OMG I Must vote for this guy". Otherwise my signature violates it too.

I thought and still do that it is an honor for a novice like me to be in the running.

Your post was unwarranted and so were your comments. If you dont like something then just dont look at it. If you can help any of us improve then say it. Otherwise be negative somewhere else.

Your issues are obviously with the contest and not us. Direct your attention there and leave us alone.

-Jason

[sabret00the]

tbh trackpads, it doesn't matter, you'll have your opinion, i'll have mine, such is the life of forums, my 'negativity' was my opinion posted in context, and i'm sure that if i mentioned your board as one that i felt was special we wouldn't have had this conversation, thank you for your time though ;)

[trackpads]

tbh trackpads, it doesn't matter, you'll have your opinion, i'll have mine, such is the life of forums, my 'negativity' was my opinion posted in context, and i'm sure that if i mentioned your board as one that i felt was special we wouldn't have had this conversation, thank you for your time though ;)
I defending everyone else's, I am happy with mine ;-)

Ps. I completely agree with Wayne on this one.

[HiDeo]

I vote 2spoemas.com, but i couldn't see Steven-Seagal.net :(

[Craigr]

I vote 2spoemas.com, but i couldn't see Steven-Seagal.net :(
Loads okay for me. What error do you get?

Someone actually voted for my site, and it wasn't me. :)

Craig

[trackpads]

I've always been able to get through to Steven-Seagal.net (http://www.steven-seagal.net/forum/). Craig, this is what I like about your site-

Posts: 25,003, Members: 699

That is an active group of users!!!! I am trying to generate that activity but a lot of my users register just for the galleries.

[Dean C]

Wayne it's unfair to do that. You can't force people to vote on content criteria. Even if you do get this renamed to forum showcase competition or whatever else I'll still continue to vote purely on style like many others. People like myself and many other designers invest a lot of our time into designing our forums. Why do we always get criticised for wanting some recognition in this contest? Large forums that server content perfectly like ipodlounge.com and dbforums.com get recognition in their own right as constantly being recognized as a source for information. I find it an insult how month in month out people act as if people who vote on design are doing a bad thing. Well perhaps you should take a little time to think about the effort we put into designing these forums and we surely deserve recognition for that.

[trackpads]

No one is telling you not to vote for what ever reason you think a site is nice. The rules specifically state that you vote based solely on your own judgement and you are completely right to do so. If the prettiest site wins, so be it, it is still a fair contest.

What my problem is that some people have posted about how some of the sites are *weak* and shouldnt have been nominated because they haven't been retouched by a Photoshop grad student on acid. That is just wrong. I am glad some people spend hundreds of hours making truly beautifiul sites, but some of our sites are just as good in other ways, if not better and that doesnt mean they shouldnt be VBOTM, or nominated for it.

-Jason

[Dean C]

You contradicted yourself. People have the right to vote for who they want for whatever yet they don't have the right to express their opinions on their criteria. Of course someone like myself who votes on design is going to say the last two months are a little weaker graphically than before as that's our personal criteria. Your site has every right to be in vbotm as you said and i'm not criticising you for that but just don't go on about people who vote on design. That is what incenses me. That was not just directed at you for the record :)

- Dean

[trackpads]

Mist,

I think you misunderstood my post, my fault. The reason why people should not be critisizing in this post is discussed in the rules-

"6. As a last request: Please write only positive comments. If you must write something negative please add a suggestion on how what you don't like may be improved. Thanks."

I apologize if you misunderstood. I just dont think negative comments should be posted about the sites (unless they are followed by a honest suggestion to improve).

I also think that if there are issues with the current contest then we should start another post like "Top 10 reasons I dont like the VBOTM contest" or something :)

That way any comments meant for the VB Staff are not accidently directed at current contestants. It creates a bad environment when people use words like *weak*.

Again, I apologize for my lack of explaining, I am a grunt :) :)

-Jason

[AWS]

I'm the one on here every month that complains about the way the voting goes. I was always the staunchest critic of sites that take long to load.
I like a nice graphical design as much as the next and appreciate the work the designers do. However, I will not stick around for a page to load for more than 10 or 15 seconds. When I see my taskbar saying loading xx amount of graphics I'm gone.
There were sites up for vote in the past that had nice clean designs using css that looked every bit as good as some of the graphical designs yet they never stood a chance to win because they were up against heavy graphics.
This is not a knock on anyone, but, if you are a designer there is more to design than Photoshop.

Let me ask you this.
How many heavy graphics sites have large userbases with hundreds of thousands of posts?
I don't see one forum in the mill+ thread that has a graphical design.
Why is that?
People are just not going to wait for a site to load.
Most people are still on dialup. Designers should take that into consideration.

[trackpads]

Ok, I am off topic but how do you tell how long your site takes to load? I am on cable so everything is blazing at 1.5mb but AWS has a good point. Is there a tool for that? or a site that will tell you this?

Thanks,

-Jason

[Wayne Luke]

Wayne it's unfair to do that. You can't force people to vote on content criteria. Even if you do get this renamed to forum showcase competition or whatever else I'll still continue to vote purely on style like many others. People like myself and many other designers invest a lot of our time into designing our forums. Why do we always get criticised for wanting some recognition in this contest? Large forums that server content perfectly like ipodlounge.com and dbforums.com get recognition in their own right as constantly being recognized as a source for information. I find it an insult how month in month out people act as if people who vote on design are doing a bad thing. Well perhaps you should take a little time to think about the effort we put into designing these forums and we surely deserve recognition for that. Never said you had to vote on that... That is what I vote on. Personally I couldn't care less of the reasons. This is not a style nor has it ever been a style contest. If you see it that way and can't look past that, it is not my place to change you.

And I have voted for a great many sites with good designs. However, don't you think that for something such as a forum designed to get 100 or more page views a day out of someone, that 10-15 seconds per page because of graphics is excessive?

[Thomas P]

Trackpads.com - War related? No thanks.
Steven-Seagal.net - plain vb3
Unrealfans.com - I dislike the coloring
2spoemas.com - Spanish, but very nice
Eqcleric.com - This is nice, got my vote

@all: Don't take this comp to serious... ;)

[trackpads]

Trackpads.com - War related? No thanks.
Steven-Seagal.net - plain vb3
Unrealfans.com - I dislike the coloring
2spoemas.com - Spanish, but very nice
Eqcleric.com - This is nice, got my vote

@all: Don't take this comp to serious... ;)
Its really nice to know that service to ones nation is appreciated

"Trackpads.com - War related? No thanks."

[UHN_ED]

None are any good, so I'll give a pity vote to unrealfans.

[M4g!k]

Eqcleric.com (http://www.eqcleric.com/forums)...

[fonzerelli_79]

went for trackpads

i really dont know how they modified a new release of vb so much in such a small space of time

well done

[Jacko]

Eqcleric.com (http://www.eqcleric.com/forums) Got my vote.

Very nice and clean.

[louisl]

I picked Trackpads.com Like the overall site and forum.

Good Luck.

[ForosEnInternet]

2spoemas.com is a good looking, simple and optimal design. Is my favorite ;)

Really good man

[Floris]

2spoemas.com (http://www.2spoemas.com/foros/) is in the lead !! 0000w0000wh00

[dutchbb]

Trackpads.com is obviously the better layout... a vote from me

[activegaming]

I voted for 2spoemas; looks the best in my opinion. The rest - other than EQClerics - look too much like the default skin.

[Zorck]

My vote go to 2spoemas very looking site, so nice to see.

Greetings from redactiva.net.

[ABLady]

2spoemas.com (http://www.2spoemas.com/foros/)

Great job. I love your design. It's very refreshing and so nice and easy on the eye. I just love it. :)

[s.molinari]

Hi all,

Congrats go to 2spoemas.com (http://www.2spoemas.com/foros/) our first winner in 2004.

Will the owner of the board please contact me per PM.

Thanks.

Scott

[trackpads]

Congratulations to 2spoemas!!

[Dean C]

Congrats!

[Hyper22Shadow]

Congrats :)

[Elmer]

Thanks for congrats! I'm really really happy to be a winner :) the first of this year;
Thanks to all who voted for my board and made it win . thanks thanks many thanks ;)

[Zorck]

Felicitaciones amigo!