New Skin Thread [IMPORTANT]
 

yes, I've said this before, we need a stranger skin.
We had one, but it was pukish in the least.
and there was this awesome skin when I first came here around 3 years ago with abe and it was all native like and cool, I miss it.
these skins are nice, but they get kinda old after a while.

Anyone else?
And I really don't get the honey one

I really like the way this one is set up, (Well by "this one" I mean the Industrial skin, because that is the one that I use) but I would love a new skin. I think it should have the same format of the Industrial skin, (All the others are just to confusing) but it should be Mudokon based. That would be so cool! A Mudokon based Skin would be very cool, but would be hard work.


What type did you have in mind, AbeGuy?

There are two other skins available, if you realy get bored woth this one...

I dunno if the Stranger skin is still in production, last time I saw it it was far from finished.
The current skin is nice enough if you ask me, it doesn't get old IMO. It's the forum style...
I'm sure we will get a new skin sometime, but a lot of work went into the current skin and I think it was designed with the long term in mind.

Proposal: A new skin would be nice.

Reality: Nobody can be bothered to make one.

Does anyone even have the right skills to make one?

Surely plenty of people have the skills. But it takes up a lot of time to create every graphic and puzzle it together in a functional skin. And time is something not many of us have.

How about we wait until the movie is out. I mean, jesus, don't you guys think it's a little LATE to have a Stranger skin in production?

But in reality, it would be nice to have. I think we should stick with Industrial as our official skin though.

We didn't have a Munch one till a while after the game, and I guess this theme (the munch one) is nice and I'll live with it. the Industrial, is, I believe, the first, isn't it? But I never really liked it. But if its in production, I won't push. A skin based off the movie would be a good idea too

Munch was actualy a theme before the Industrial skin was made.

...But what if the movie is Non oddworld related? Who knows? Not because I'm against that, but if the skin didn't have anything related to Oddworld then it wouldn't be the same. But when you say it a new skin would be nice - this one is getting a bit boring:fuzemb: but it's still nice though.


~DS~

Havoc, you are absolutely right about the time it takes. Ugh, somebody wanted me to make a forum skin, and it took me a month because of everything else I had going on.

Alcar did metion he'll have the skin already done by SW worldwide release, but mabey I should stop bothering Alcar with his unfixed promises by pointing them out.

I love the current industrial skin, but I can see some nice skins in my mind. Of course no one will bother. Atleast we have some pretty looking banners to update the visuals :)

While the industrial skin does look damn cool, I use the... *checks name* "HoneyBee" theme since it has the shortest load time (and I used to be on dial-up).

...I really should start trying the other two, see which one is the best astheticaly.

A third one? Why not! While I wouldn't say "we need this! someone make it!", I'd be sure congradulate anyone that goes to the bother of making one... which no one probably has time to do...

Wasn't there a Stranger theme for like, four days? Then the forum got hacked and it was erased?

And what would one have to do to create a skin?

html knowledge. thats a big factor

That too, yes. Thats what I meant by puzzeling it all together. The fasted I ever build a skin took me an entire week, building on it almost 7 hours a day. Result was pretty awsome though ;).

And yea dave, there once was a Stranger skin. But it's only to be seen in the staff room now. It hasn't been touched in ages either.

Huh? You don't need to puzzle it all together, the vBulletin template does that all for you. All you need to do is replace the graphics files that are already in existance, with your own graphics, but keep the filename the same.

Editing a skin requires no modification of the html whatsoever. The only things you need to change are the stylesheet (.CSS file) colours (which requires knowledge of the Hexidecimal colourchart) and the graphics files (usually .jpeg and .gif).

I'll volunteer myself to make OWF a new skin if that's what is wanted. I've got some spare time on my hands as well as all the necessary know-how and graphics tools, so I don't mind doing it. Everyone start listing some ideas for what they would like to see.

It depends on how advanced you want the skin to look. The current industrial skin for instance, requires quite some editing in the HTML for it to look the way it does. And that skin I made was not for V-bulletin, bur for Invision Power Board. And even though the principle is the same, I wanted it very advanced as well, so it took a long time of puzzeling.

That's not the way vB templates work. You don't NEED to edit the HTML, you edit the CSS, and graphics to create the "look" - editing the HTML fragments toggles the text that appears. There may be a few things that require you to edit XHTML fragments, for instance to change CSS classes to something more convenient and easy to remember, but I'm not seeing any here. Or at least not any major ones.

The basic core of the forum is the vB standard. Nothing wild has been done to it. (not trying to downplay any effort that went into making it of course)

I'd happily admit to being wrong if you can point out the modifications (I may be getting a little rusty at the whole vB editing thing, since I've not done it in ages). The only ones I can see are on the logo navbar. The rest is all pretty much standard, with the addition of some graphics.

What you discribe is the basic way of skinning. But the header of the industrial skin for instance, that alone takes heaps of tables, rows and collums. And that has not got anything to do with the CSS yet.
The top graphic of a topic, the striped bar above the user info, that exists of a grand total of 5 diffrent images. The original VB template doesn't even support a bar like that on the bottom, let alone it existing of 5 images. VB standard has only one background image there instead of 5.

Also the position of many pieces of info, such as the posting date, buttons, online or offline, new or old, post number. Those are all stuff that have been moved to diffrent places. The date, for example, is at the top of the post in the VB standard and the post number and stuff are (i believe) at the bottom. In this industrial skin they're vice versa.

CSS only helps with styles. HTML detirmaines where goes what and what part of the site is influanced by the CSS editing. So just messing with the CSS won't cut it to make a very advanced skin like this one.

I believe I mentioned the header in my previous post. That really isn't very complicated at all. People think of tables and they do tend to think "oh my god complicated", but they're really not. Believe me, on this scale, nothing is complicated. I've worked on pages with a total count of 350 tables, with 8 sets of tables within tables, which are all in two master tables. That's when it gets complex. Making a table that can stitch together a few images isn't all that hard in comparison.

That's simple, you merely edit the fragment template, so that instead of spawning one image, it spawns a table with all those images in it. This is a well documented vBulletin hack.

Yet again, you don't even have to edit these. You can actually download them already done for you on the web - in fact I believe even the vBulletin site itself has some of these.

Actually CSS controls the formatting. HTML makes up the actual parts. You need to edit stuff like this if you want to move something to a different location yes, but if we're talking about skinning, you'll want to modify the graphics and the CSS. That controls the bulk of the forum style wise, and unless you want to do something specific to the layout, you don't really need to touch the HTML.

Like I've said already, this isn't a very advanced skin. This is a basic skin, with some preferential modification of things like time and date location, header logo and navbar, and post table. Many tables are left plain, and quite a lot of things have been left in the vBulletin standard appearance. I've worked on skins for forums that have everything modified in very complex ways. Forums so heavily formatted that not a single table exists without at least some kind of decoration around the borders. Where even text input areas have been formatted.

Just messing with the CSS is not what I'm talking about. Completely changing the CSS colourscheme, as well as completely changing the graphics - that's what I'm talking about. There's no need to change the HTML because everything is where we're most used to it being. I don't see the point of relocating the stars so that they're under the avatar, and moving postcounts to the bottom near the buttons, and other such things. It's just messing up something that works perfectly well as it is.

True enough, you can download a template. But still, I like to know how my own skin works, so I usualy just take it apart and put it back together again XD. Talking soley skinning, yes then the CSS should take care of it. If you want to change the layout, you usualy either need a template or do manual HTML edits.

Haha, so true. I did exactly the same thing with a perfectly good copy of vBulletin when I first got it and had to redownload it cause I messed it up. :P

But yeah, layouts and skins are two different things... much as it's fun to screw about with the layout I think we can leave it as it is, since it serves it's purpose so well.

So come on people, lets get some ideas going...

You know what I don't think we've actually got people's attention here... perhaps an announcement is in order or something?

If any forumers want to work on a skin, I see it as a good idea. And as you're doing it for the benefit of the forums, I don't see the point in asking Peter's permission, as he obviously hasn't the time to do one for us and I can't see him opposing the idea of members working together to better the community.

I'll sticky this thread and stick important in the title or something.

Just bear in mind that forumer will need to be granted Admin rights depending on what permissions these forums use.

I realy don't think so! If people are going to make a skin, first I want to see a design before admins even concider giving someone access to the admin area. And it's not even nececery! Once someone comes up with a nice design, it's still Alcar who has to put it all in place, since I think it's not wise to give just anyone who comes up with a skin, access to the admin area.

Exactly, Havoc. We're not handing out admin abilities. We want you to show us your ideas and if you have a really nice skin that we all decide we'd like, you'll send the bits to Alcar and he'll assemble it.

The chances of me being given admin access are pretty similar to the chances of a gnome shaped meteorite hitting George Bush on the head live on tv during the state of the union address. :P

But yeah, Alcar would be the one who would actually put it on here. I'd just do the modified CSS and graphics.