hey i made a blog
So I’ve been rolling this around in my head for a while, and the more I think about it the more I think we should get some new forum skins made.
Now obviously that hasn’t worked out well in the past, but I think the main thing wrong with every previous attempt was: it was always one person saying “I will make this thing!” and then running out of steam after their second run through Photoshop.
I think making a new forum skin should be more than just saving a local copy of Industrial and hacking new PNGs and colors in.
What I’m proposing is to make a forum skin by starting fresh from the ground up, something that’s easier to manage and understand.
I think the best way to do this is to start by building a kind of “template” skin using HTML and CSS. We build something that’s a blank slate with a smart layout that’s easy to modify, and then we use that to build out new skins.
I can’t claim to know the ins and outs of vBulletin, but I do know from looking through
their documentation that the whole thing is based around HTML and CSS. There are
tons of ways to build great frameworks using pure HTML and CSS – take
Foundation for example.
Best of all, by starting afresh and using simple HTML and CSS, we can make improvements – like building a skin that loads quickly and is mobile friendly.
So what I want to know is who would be interested? I know there’s a couple folks who’ve tried making skins in the past and given up, and I’m willing to bet we have a few folks around who know how to build websites. I think the key to actually getting a forum skin finished is by making it a group effort, and by having a definite start point that everyone can build up from.
Thoughts?
e: I’ve put together a rough collection of reading material, tutorials, guides and tools for anyone interested in helping out:
http://owf.radicoolthings.com/resources
