Darker Forum Interface / Skin Possible?

Buckster · Jan 23, 2013

So, the mods and admins here have no interaction with the site owners to make suggestions? SRSLY?

Why do you even have this section of the forums? Just to laugh as we yammer on, knowing it will fall on deaf ears? It's like having a suggestion box with a hole in the bottom, positioned over a trash can.

wicked · Jan 23, 2013

Thanks for the suggestion Buckster! Will look into it and see what we can do.

Buckster · Jan 23, 2013

wicked said:
Thanks for the suggestion Buckster! Will look into it and see what we can do.

Much appreciated!

amolitor · Jan 23, 2013

There's a browser plugin called Stylish

Stylish - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

which allows you to add "cascading style sheets" on a custom basis for specific web sites. After hacking around with it a bit, I came up with this (for Chrome, your browser may vary, but the general shape should be similar):

- install the appropriate stylish plugin
- go edit/options/whatever it. From Chrome it's menu item "Window" -> Extensions -> then click on the Options link for the Stylish extension
- there should be a "write new style" button, click that.
- In the "Code" window type in this stuff:

.postrow {
background-color:#AAAAAA;
}

- click the Specify button and select URLs on the domain and stick in "thephotoforum.com"
- give your new style a name in the Name box
- click save

This gives you a somewhat grey background for posts. It's not terribly pretty, but it might be an improvement. CSS people can probably sort out a much better "style" for the forum. It might also be possible to modify one of the many many pre-existing styles to work well with thephotoforum.com.

The result looks like this:

I used a pale grey background since I can't get the text to change color, so I wanted to leave the text legible. Also, I can't really get much of the REST of the page to change color.

amolitor · Jan 23, 2013

Actually, try this for the code. It's not too bad, and it looks quite a bit better. I learned about !important and how, well, important it is.

Colors are just RGB colors, which photographers ought to be able to figure out, right?

.postbody, .postrow, .eventbody, .postdetails,
.userinfo, .postfoot,
.lightbox > div,
.lightbox > div > div {
background:#85858A !important;
color:#F8F8FF !important;
}

.quote_container, .after_content {
color: black !important;
}

which greys some other stuff out and creates a.. definitely nicER look, albeit not a NICE one per se. It also hits the popup lightbox a bit.

Designing an actual style that looks nice, is legible, and shows off photos well is real work, but this seems to improve the photos (to my eye) without obliterating legibility. There's some ugly bits, for sure.

Solid idea, Buckster. I might actually keep this.

amolitor · Jan 24, 2013

Obviously I am going a little nuts here.

In order to use Stylish you need to be using Firefox of Chrome as your browser. There may be workaround for other browsers, but basically those are the two that work easily.

If you go to userstyles.org and search for thephotoforum you will find my custom skin for thephotoforum.com. You can install the Stylish add-on/extension from there, and then install the "style". It's easy to disable or remove if you dislike it, and you can edit it if you don't like the colors.

runnah · Jan 24, 2013

It's ok I wish it was all darker. Dark enough so that you could get away with white text. But good start.

amolitor · Jan 24, 2013

The trouble is that a LOT of what you see on the screen is little tiny images. Many of those rounded corners, for instance.

Since THOSE are white, you kind of have to leave a lot of other stuff white, otherwise it REALLY starts to look bad. I did fool around with making the text white, but I wasn't super happy with it.

If you go and edit the style (Extensions in Chrome, Add-Ons in Firefox, and then click about some until you find an Edit button), the first section of it with:

.postbody, .postrow, .eventbody, .postdetails, .userinfo, .postfoot {
etc etc..

is what fools with specifically the "looking at posts in a thread" part. You can set the background (i.e. background color) and color (foreground color -- text) to whatever you like and check it out.

Really doing a *proper* job is above my pay grade, but I think I got a not-too-ugly daily-driver kinda look that gives a darker background for the pictures.

The lightbox is, I think, much improved.

runnah · Jan 24, 2013

amolitor said:
The trouble is that a LOT of what you see on the screen is little tiny images. Many of those rounded corners, for instance.

Since THOSE are white, you kind of have to leave a lot of other stuff white, otherwise it REALLY starts to look bad. I did fool around with making the text white, but I wasn't super happy with it.

If you go and edit the style (Extensions in Chrome, Add-Ons in Firefox, and then click about some until you find an Edit button), the first section of it with:

.postbody, .postrow, .eventbody, .postdetails, .userinfo, .postfoot {
etc etc..

is what fools with specifically the "looking at posts in a thread" part. You can set the background (i.e. background color) and color (foreground color -- text) to whatever you like and check it out.

Really doing a *proper* job is above my pay grade, but I think I got a not-too-ugly daily-driver kinda look that gives a darker background for the pictures.

The lightbox is, I think, much improved.

I think you did a good job and yest without the ability to edit images you're only able to do so much.

I suggested before that the admins just install a new vbulletin theme. They are free and there are even setting that allow users to pick the theme they want to run.

I dug around a bit ant it looks like this forum is pretty standard with minimal customization so a new theme should just slip into place.