After going through the dramatic change from Elysiun to BlenderArtists, Blenderartists.org now has a new theme.
From the BA thread:
New Forum Design
Yeps you've seen it right,.. after abusing the default vBulletin theme for far too long we've now managed to complete the redesign of the forum and launch it! We really love the new design and hope you will enjoy it too.Credits
You will probably notice the nice header image. It is an image by Obiwan_C. We will change the header image periodically. It will always be an image posted on this website.The main design has been made by Samo Korosec from the froodee design bureau. He also designed many other projects within the Blender Community, like the Blender 2.0 and 2.3 manuals.
The forum template is based on the vBulletin default theme, but has been heavily modified.
Most of the icons are from the famfamfam silk icon set, which is a free set of icons published under the Creative Commons Attribute 2.5 license. Some of the icons have come from the Tango Project, those are also published under the same license.
Future plans
You will notice not all of the links at the top are actually working right now. This is because we've got some plans to expand the website. I won't give a time frame for this right now. But it will be ready, when it's ready
One thing we will be doing soon, is re-launching planet.blenderartists.org (probably next week).Problems
Though we've tried to test the new design on all common platforms & browsers this is almost impossible to do. It is still possible that you actually experience some flaws in the design. If you think the flaw is an actual bug, please post about it in the website & forum section of this website.We try to support the following browsers:
Firefox 1.5+
Internet Explorer 6.0+ (though we haven't tried IE 7, yet)
Opera 9+
Safari 2+Thanks to everyone who helped out!
Greets,
Timothy
So go visit the most widely used Blender forum on Earth and enjoy the smooth, sleek design of the revamped Blenderartisits.org!
40 Comments
Yup, and the forums just crashed on me. Am i the only one? The connectionspeed ground to a halt, untill i couldnt get a connection(to the forums, all other sites load like lightning).
If im the only one this happened to, disregard this post.
As for the theme, its pretty good, but with some definate downsides.
But good work!
Drew
What is up with the ads in the middle of threads???? It is really annoying (they used to be at the top and easily ignored).
Windows XP + Firefox 2.0
Works fine for me with Firefox2.0 and IE7.
Seems to work fine now.
The only critic i have is that hyperlinks in posts do not really stand out (without hovering over them) and of course the ads in the middle of the page.
A minor thing: Sometimes my eyes really start to hurt when scrolling trough a list of forum threads (an marked as read) .. but that might just be me ;)
Werner
Oh nice, the links look much better now .. this is either the fastest 'customer support' or we have some mind-readers here :)
I'm using Iceweasel 2.0 (Debian) and Firefox 2.0 (WindowsXP) btw.
Werner
Quote of B@rt:
So go vistit the most widely used Blender forum on Earth and enjoy the smooth, sleek design of the revamped Blenderartisits.org!
Should it not be:
So go visit the most widely used Blender forum on Earth and enjoy the smooth, sleek design of the revamped Blenderartists.org!
Some small spell problems. B@rt what's going on with your English.
I'm having the same problem with BlenderArtists. But "visit"?
My eyes are seriously beginning to hurt with all this white...
//Mathias
Arrgh so White, my geeky eyes fells like they are burning.
And what is up with the ads?
I hope there will be a theme switch. I realy dont like pure white in the nights.
.
@Anicator: thanks! I fixed the spelling errors (didn't write this one, btw ;-)
It's hard to read and follow threads, there is no distinction between each post and yes the adverts are nasty where they are. The colour scheme is not so easy on the eyes anymore and why is the site not centered (like this site), if it stays as is I think my visits will get less and less which is too bad :( .
looks good - seems to work reasonably well too - - - but talking about website redesigns has reminded me about a certain bone I have to pick with the blendernation admin (Bart?) - the problem is simple, when browsing news posts on blendernation, I ALWAYS (on all the computers I've used so far) get a little message at the bottom underneath the comment box that says: "You are the author of this entry. Manage subscriptions." with the last bit a link to a secure (and obviously unaccessible for me) page that I can only presume is meant for the author of the post... this is somewhat annoying also; because it prevents me from getting email notifications about replies to my comments since the option to do that has been replaced. The problem has been around since the last site redesign (I have mentioned it before) - can SOMEBODY please contact bart to fix this since I don't have his email address...
ps: check out google code search - it might make a good idea for a news post in the future
-epat ;0
Man.. My eyes hurts, and they are getting lost.
Ads in the threds... nasty.
No centering.
And what is up with the scoll, everytime there is a picture in a thread.
.. ( http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=80621 ) on IE 6.0.
Realy hope that this gets fixed.
.:
Mivrex
@epat: yes, I'm aware of that issue. It's on my todo list and I expect to be able to fix this during the christmas holiday. I think it has to do with our caching system...
ah ok - no worries lol - I was just making sure you knew - besides - I can't care now, I'm off to try JhK's new particles rewrite patch that's only just been uploaded lol ... -epat ;) ;)
well, its working fine now..strange. Anyway, the white doesnt overly bug me, but it is a little bright.
There are some things that could use fixing, but i like the design(orange and whatnot, as compared to the blue :P)
peace
Drew
Why'd they have to change it? I thought it was great the way it was before. Now everything on the page looks so similar that it's like a disorganized mess!
I prefer the old format. The new site is difficult to read. It is hard to see where posts start and end. There is too much white.
Please fix this.
Ads in threads... squash them with adblock plus in firefox. And greasemonkey will take care of the Web 2.0 wank going on in this redesign.
Seriously, advertising as annoying as this in a forum about open-source software is a little bit too greedy. I don't mind the odd tiny Adsense ad but headlines at 30pt between every fourth or fifth post is overkill and will drive people away. The ads aren't even relevant to 3d software - it just spouts out crap about mp3 players etc.
I don't get why everyone has to create website headings with a reflection at the bottom of the text. It's old and it's done. Surely BlenderArtists could have chosen a banner that is a little more relevant to 3d itself - what is up with that orange arrow covering up the blue and green blobbuy thing??
Look pretty poor on high resolution screens. I'd try again.
This really is a disappointment! They took almost a year to come up with THIS?
It's ugly!! And far to white!!
I really, really miss the nice, warm colourscheme of the good old Elysiun!
It would be better if they adopted the colourscheme from the blenderartists.org site!
i like the way it looks. but it's really hard on my eyes for some reason. the other website was waaaay easier to read.
For people complaining about the ads, there are browsers(opera and the IE based acoo brower) that has build-in ads filter, works great for me. surf the net without any classmates/smilies/freeipod/googleads.
Yes I known site owners has to make a living too...
The new design LOOKS nice, but I am afraid usability has been degraded in my opinion. It is much harder now to quickly scan and find what I want.
What would be very very nice is if I had the option in my user control panel to select which skin I wanted- the new one or the old one. I'm fairly certain VBulletin can be configured to do that.
The new skin is pretty, but it's not working for me.
Very artistic design, but unfortunately artistic and userfriendly don't go well together in this case. And because I want to use the forum (not just hang it on a wall), I hope they will concider changing some things. And like Mivrex already mentioned, having to scroll a 'normal sized' image should never happen on an Art forum.
The readability has decreased to the point that I doubt I'll visit it as much as I currently do. (unless they change it into something a bit more ergonomic of course)
"Blenderartists.org now has a new theme" actually means the FORUMS of Blenderartists.org now has a new theme :)
not impressed. Blenderartists has just gone down hill from Elysiun, the default that was there for so so long and now something worse. no connection with blender in any way, non of the so called artistic design that's taken place relates at all. Crap!
I hate it, you mean to say someone actually designed this! Far too white, not a pleasure to use at all.
I'm sorry to say I can not even spend time on the forums anymore. Is this some kind of plot to make us get real lives? Haha, just kidding. But it's pretty bad.
All hail the M.h.p.e's design idea!
Though change is good, I agree, it's hard on the eyes and hard to distiguish between the comments.
I think Ven0mSevenX's theme should be made.
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=71343
It looks excellent the new design.
But, I do have a few gripes.
I feel the header is to big, it takes up half my display. And I feel theres alot of space being wasted with it. Especialy around the text.
Because the forum is not centered, I think it causes a few other problems for people use to forums being centred. I don't know what but it feel un-comfortable.
The colour scheme is fine for me, not too bad and looks elligant.
The advert printed at the top of every 2nd post is very annoying and causes me sometimes to completely skip it.
When someone post large images, a scrollbar appears at the bottom of the post, and it wastes usuable space on the left.
All in all it is pretty good, but I just feel it wastes to much important, usable space.
With everything there is going to be a few teething problems, so I'm confident you'll solve the bigger problems.
The rest of them are most likely I'm not use to it. ;)
It hurts my eyes to the point that I don't feel particularly good about being told I "need to get used to it". It's artistic sure, but lousy for actual users.
The new theme is a disappointment. The contrast is very low so that it all flows together. It’s inconvenient, cold and uncomfortable. Definitely not something to hang around for hours. (For a good implementation of a bright theme have a look on blendernation.com)
For a compensation we get embedded advertisement and a decentered layout.
Most astonishing is that the stylish theme from the blenderartists.org site was dismissed.
And very bad performance of the ‘moderators’, just closing the corresponding thread when folks have a different opinion.
People hate the design, people love the design. Surely you will understand that we cannot please
everybody. The comments made in that closed thread were mostly valid but after pages and pages of "I love it!" or "I Hate it" there is just nothing more to say. We will take people's comments into account but there will always be users who don't like the design, such is life.
What surprises me is that so many people have comments about the design, yet when we held a design contest a while ago the entries weren't that good. If you think you can do better, you had your chance!
Roel
They reopened the thread. Thank God. Just get "Stylish" and change all the bg colors.
When deciding to mess with traditional web and forum functionalities, I feel that the designer(s) should have asked "Why change it?" but instead it looks like they said "Why not?" and went ahead and changed it anyway. Some of the decisions appear to be entirely artistic and don't seem have practical explanations which would be great if it was an information-only site rather than an interactive user-forum. In fact, it bears a resemblance to the blendernation colour scheme - and while that works brilliantly here, it simply fails on the forum .
The forum design looks like design for design's sake so now, for example, we have links that just look like bold text. This may well render some older posts almost usless as it will be difficult to tell text that was bolded for emphasis from text links. Newcomers will be forgiven for not catching on immediately.
The same goes for the decision not to visually separate individual posts. I doubt there is a compelling functional reason for choosing to make posts meld together.
Personally I don't recall a design contest but I do recall Timothy making a statement that the new forum would be white, back when the blenderartists (vBulletin) forum was launched. A lot of discussion ensued then but it seems little notice was taken of the comments or opinions. There was even a smiley competition and Sago produced a huge selection of professional-looking, original emoticons - yet we've been left with the vBulletin defaults. We were alos pormised footer navigation, including a forum jump but we've been given an entirely useless "similar threads" function instead. Some of those threads are four years old, locked (hopefully) and not remotely related to the topic being viewed.
Yes there's a split between like and dislike and this is usual in any design discussion (you have people from 13 to 50+ using the forum - you're not going to get unanimous support). However, even most of those who "like" it have expressed reservations about the lack of delineation. Most important though are concerns about functional changes, like the loss of post-counts and the hiding of links.
That said, I mostly don't mind the changes and Timothy is clearly no idiot since he's been running elysiun and blenderartists successfully for years. We can only hope some important changes will be made fairly promptly when he returns.
Here's the $64000 question: "Why on earth did they ever leave elysiun in the first place?"
I see a few comments that I think are uncalled for. Before posting such harsh comments, I do think that people should realise that the people who worked on this put a lot of their own time into the project. Even if you don't like it, *they* spent weeks, maybe months on trying to improve it. How much time did you invest in helping the community lately?
That's not to say you can't criticise, but at least be constructive.
Having said that, I also have more difficulties reading the new pages. I would prefer a more visible distinction between the various elements on the page (individual posts, but also the toolbar below the graphical header). I guess you need to guide the eye a bit more and pull it toward relevant elements?
Of course, it's far easier to crack an egg than to lay one (crappy translation of Dutch proverb ;-)
Quote:
"How much time did you invest in helping the community lately?"
They - never - consulted the users of Elysiun about the change they were going to make.
IMO They should never have transferred to VBulletin! Elysiun was a great forum! This is crap and I'm not using it anymore!!