vBulletin 4 Series Layout

[---MAD---]

I think userfriendliness is something that needs more focus. There are a lot of features and settings avaliable to members now and sometimes they don't know they exist or don't know where to start looking.

[Christie]

I like to see a Welcome Panel incorporated into the design like the King Kovifor one on vb.org - think it gives a personal feel.

[SSSlippy]

The navbar is getting to crowded with all the options. More drop downs like the User CP being a drop down reducing clicks to get to locations. Make the search drop down into a normal search like vb.org has helps clear that up.

Honestly I feel a big issue is there is a lot of scrolling to be done to get access to all the information. I am not sure how navigation can be improved but something needs to be done to make it more friendly.

Relocating posting rules to anywhere but where they are, they are to far down on the post are and take up alot of space.

[Chelf12]

Heh. As long as it doesn't look bland, or have columns in it, I'm fine.

[Ryan Ashbrook]

The navbar is getting to crowded with all the options. More drop downs like the User CP being a drop down reducing clicks to get to locations.

Making User CP a menu and adding options to it won't reduce clicks.

For Example:

As it stands: "User CP" (Opens Whole User CP) > "Edit Signature" = Two Clicks.

As a menu: "User CP" (Opens a menu) > "Edit Signature" = Still Two Clicks.

Then there's the other options in the User CP that probably wouldn't be added to the menu, like Thread Subscriptions. Making the User CP a menu would actually add more clicks in the long run. Because they would have to open the menu, then click a link to go into the User CP, then click another link to get to where they want to go.

[TomJames]

Indeed, like the Blogs button on the navbar is now more annoying than it used to be, it was one click to access the main blogs page, now it's two (Blogs (Opens menu) -> Blogs (opens blogs).

[---MAD---]

Making User CP a menu and adding options to it won't reduce clicks.

For Example:

As it stands: "User CP" (Opens Whole User CP) > "Edit Signature" = Two Clicks.

As a menu: "User CP" (Opens a menu) > "Edit Signature" = Still Two Clicks.

Then there's the other options in the User CP that probably wouldn't be added to the menu, like Thread Subscriptions. Making the User CP a menu would actually add more clicks in the long run. Because they would have to open the menu, then click a link to go into the User CP, then click another link to get to where they want to go.

Not just about the number of clicks. Its also about the number of pages you have to load to get to where you want.

[Ryan Ashbrook]

Not just about the number of clicks. Its also about the number of pages you have to load to get to where you want.

FWIW, I've noticed most prefer just the way it is now.

Besides, I find it more user friendly to load the entire User CP anyway. Once you do, all the options are presented to you.

Making it a drop down menu would just hide stuff even more than it is now.

[---MAD---]

FWIW, I've noticed most prefer just the way it is now.

Besides, I find it more user friendly to load the entire User CP anyway. Once you do, all the options are presented to you.

Making it a drop down menu would just hide stuff even more than it is now.

Yeah thats where it gets tricky. Having menus all over the place means they are harder to spot and harder to find what you need.

[cbiweb]

I'd like to see a tabbed forum home, to help reduce the vertical scrolling caused by the current linear style.

[cheat-master30]

Long post coming up, so be warned. Aka, I have a very strong opinion about what the vBulletin 4 layout should and should not be like, but oh well.

First of all, it should ideally have completely new images and icons from the vBulletin 3 default. I don't care if it's more work, the current ones not only generally look horrible, but just don't fit the style, and it's rather sad having a quill pen icon on a button for a piece of software being released in 2009. Not that this is a vBulletin only thing that needs changed, every piece of forum software I've seen has generally boring and rather bland default images, but making them new, exciting and more modern will at least liven up the support forums here and vBulletin.com, and make the problems with insanity from the icons being used by lazy forum owners who can't be bothered to make their own more bearable.

There should also be the option to make a portal type home page with different blocks of custom like the CMS, but a layout with sidebars shouldn't be the default if you get what I mean. That way, people who want their forum to be a 'website' can make it so, people who use the CMS and want the forum as an add on can and those with an existing site don't end up with multiple 'home page' type areas.

Probably an updated colour scheme as well, although I personally don't have any idea on what a new colour scheme would be like.

There are also a few things I honestly don't want in the vBulletin 4 layout, and they are generally as follows.

First of all, don't make the main page have to be some hybrid of latest threads, posts, stats and other stuff like a portal. Vanilla is not a good model for forum software, and every time I've seen a site using it, I've found it nearly impossible to navigate. Or like Invision Power Board 3, which seems like it just has something missing layout wise (anyone else feel like it seems completely empty on the home page for some reason?)

No CSS buttons without images! Seriously, I don't want to have to edit CSS to have cool looking forum button images and what not, and believe it or not, the vast majority of websites are not in an area of content where such web 2.0 type stuff is really that welcome. A TV or gaming website for example damn well needs images related to the subject in question, styled text with no images for buttons and stuff will not cut it.

Don't mind if the content is split into multiple pages by tabs, as long as it doesn't use some horrible javascript type tab switching seen on a few other websites. Since these forums/sites are completely unusable without javascript, a decent amount of people don't have it enabled, or don't enable it for random websites, screen readers and what not are useless with such a layout, and Google isn't going to be easily able to index content shown in such a way.

No cut down layout with minimal features such as BB press or the like unless it's a style meant for mobile devices or the like. Those layouts just seem so boring and white. I don't care if minimalist is some in fashion at the moment, the general web population aren't buying it, and if someone wanted a feature minimalistic, semi boring basic piece of forum software, they probably wouldn't be buying vBulletin.

[---MAD---]

Long post coming up, so be warned. Aka, I have a very strong opinion about what the vBulletin 4 layout should and should not be like, but oh well.

First of all, it should ideally have completely new images and icons from the vBulletin 3 default. I don't care if it's more work, the current ones not only generally look horrible, but just don't fit the style, and it's rather sad having a quill pen icon on a button for a piece of software being released in 2009. Not that this is a vBulletin only thing that needs changed, every piece of forum software I've seen has generally boring and rather bland default images, but making them new, exciting and more modern will at least liven up the support forums here and vBulletin.com, and make the problems with insanity from the icons being used by lazy forum owners who can't be bothered to make their own more bearable.

There should also be the option to make a portal type home page with different blocks of custom like the CMS, but a layout with sidebars shouldn't be the default if you get what I mean. That way, people who want their forum to be a 'website' can make it so, people who use the CMS and want the forum as an add on can and those with an existing site don't end up with multiple 'home page' type areas.

Probably an updated colour scheme as well, although I personally don't have any idea on what a new colour scheme would be like.

There are also a few things I honestly don't want in the vBulletin 4 layout, and they are generally as follows.

First of all, don't make the main page have to be some hybrid of latest threads, posts, stats and other stuff like a portal. Vanilla is not a good model for forum software, and every time I've seen a site using it, I've found it nearly impossible to navigate. Or like Invision Power Board 3, which seems like it just has something missing layout wise (anyone else feel like it seems completely empty on the home page for some reason?)

No CSS buttons without images! Seriously, I don't want to have to edit CSS to have cool looking forum button images and what not, and believe it or not, the vast majority of websites are not in an area of content where such web 2.0 type stuff is really that welcome. A TV or gaming website for example damn well needs images related to the subject in question, styled text with no images for buttons and stuff will not cut it.

Don't mind if the content is split into multiple pages by tabs, as long as it doesn't use some horrible javascript type tab switching seen on a few other websites. Since these forums/sites are completely unusable without javascript, a decent amount of people don't have it enabled, or don't enable it for random websites, screen readers and what not are useless with such a layout, and Google isn't going to be easily able to index content shown in such a way.

No cut down layout with minimal features such as BB press or the like unless it's a style meant for mobile devices or the like. Those layouts just seem so boring and white. I don't care if minimalist is some in fashion at the moment, the general web population aren't buying it, and if someone wanted a feature minimalistic, semi boring basic piece of forum software, they probably wouldn't be buying vBulletin.

I definitely agree regarding the images. The current ones are bulky and look pretty bad. I also dislike the default similies, they don't seem professional at all. I also hope the images used are PNG instead of gif.

[cheat-master30]

Darn, should have mentioned the PNG format, all images definitely should be .PNG images rather gif ones.