Relic Entertainment forum. One of the most heavily altered you'll see.

[imported_Dyntheos]

Well I hope that title gets some looks ;) I do think tho that some of the skins available are the most graphically modded I've seen, right down to the post bits, so plz take the time to look thru them all.

Each can be accessed thru the quick skin changer located at the bottom (and sometimes top) of each forum.

These forums are the official forums of Relic Entertainment the makers of the game Homeworld.

There are currently 5 Skins on offer for these boards. The Default Classic skin is a very basic skin that is shown to users when they first log in. Hardly any mods on this one, as we want Guests to become used to the forums and not confused with radical skins. The NSP3 skin is also very similar to this, with just color shifts.

The Purple Haze skin is a layout mod with forum control panels down the right hand side, and a freaky look.

The last 2 are the really heavily modded ones.

The Homeworld and iCreatures skins reflect the game interfaces for those two games and as such have a non vB interface.

Of note on these 2 skins is the clear shout box at the top as well as the interface for both. The Homeworld skin Categories are all skinned and the fading link mod (dhtml not the one featured here) is in use, across most buttons. The top_links buttons and thread buttons on the Homeworld skin are from the game itself, as are most of the graphics.

The iCreatures skin incorporates a user panel at the top that has links to various aspects of the forum and the community.

Globally there are many php hacks on these boards, and individually I would say upwards of 50 template hacks (most custom) on the iCreatures and Homeworld skins.


Hope you take the time to look through everything and make some comments.

Thx,

Dyntheos. ;)


http://forums.relicnews.com

[kitzzy]

Wow! That is pretty neat indeedy. Must be a pain to update your boards. You using seperate template sets for each of those skins, right? My board is pretty customizes too but both schemes (more coming soon) use the same template set so that hacks installed only have to be installed once because i have TONS of hacks :p

Anyway, very nice job :)

[imported_Dyntheos]

yeah its slow, each has a core of hacks but a lot are individual. Sometimes i go to sleep with html running through my head after I do some mods.

Thx for the props :)

[kitzzy]

*LOL* I know what you mean. When I did the Welcome and Profile I wanted to tare my hair out *lol* Its just the tiniest detail that you can't get just right that gets ya :)

[SaintDog]

Honestly, it does not look too heavily modified, or at least not as you place it to be ("One of the most heavily altered you'll see"); while it is modified, I would not call it heavy.

The homeworld template seems to take them all, from my standpoint anyway.

Still nice regardless, I don't see many boards with many styles to choose from. vBT would have more, just a lack of time.

[shiva]

Nice.
Funny thing, I use to run a Homeworld site, I got my first forum with UltraBoard, now relicnews does the same thing, and changes as well. :)

haven't been there in a while, nice to see you guys still going strong.

[imported_Dyntheos]

The title was mainly to get ppl to look at the forums, hence my first line with the wink.

The additional graphics tho used to change the iC and HW skins make them some of the few that use graphics to change the look of the software, for instance each cell for every table on the HW skin is skinned. Not many boards go to that length to modify the look. You have here and the post bit mods are teaching ppl how to do it for their forums aswell, yet before this website opened there was nothing to show ppl how to do those kind of mods, hence the lack of forums modded to that extent on the web. ( my reference to modded here refers to the template graphic mods and not php hacks )

I have seen a few graphic skinned forums about but none that really carry the theme thru, apart from this one (which you have built upon over time ) and the xelation forums featured in vb.org (which only really skinned the postbit heavily)

I think I see the forums as modified heavily due to the time I have spent on them. The HW skin took over 100 hours to implement, alot of that intergrating the code.

I make no claim to the most heavily modded forum out there but browsing vbb's i have seen little if anything in the way of fully customed boards. Mostly you see a color shift or 2 and maybe a category background, most still use the default purple buttons that come with the software even with a color shift to say, red or something equally contrasting.

The boards you would see here that make use of the mods that are posted are the exception to the rule, not the majority. Most forums out there just change the colors in the style properties (color shift) and that's it.

Saint if you look at your forums and then at others out there I would call your forums very heavily modified. Just because you stare at them everyday shouldn't change the fact that a board like this is probably in the top 5% of boards around the world that use this software.

If you can point me to more I'd love to see them but so far I've seen little that chages the template given to you with the software.

[Tony G]

Originally posted by SaintDog
Honestly, it does not look too heavily modified, or at least not as you place it to be ("One of the most heavily altered you'll see"); while it is modified, I would not call it heavy.

The homeworld template seems to take them all, from my standpoint anyway.

Still nice regardless, I don't see many boards with many styles to choose from. vBT would have more, just a lack of time.

I have to agree, I consider heavily modified to have no match whatsoever to the default template. But yours does.

I think you need to edit the PostBit a bit, it looks too "Custom" IMO.

But nice. :)

[imported_Dyntheos]

to fully skin the postbit you must lock it into a set size. I actually did this and had something like the xelation forums. Very "UnCustom" the problem is that with a set postbit 2 things happen.

One large fonts stretch the graphics all out of shape, and two large posts containing graphics that are bigger than the postbit affect the same problem, so there are limitations to how far you can go and still keep it user friendly, but you would know that already iam guessing...

[Tony G]

Did you try to fix those? If it doesn't work try something new..

[imported_Dyntheos]

I actually had to go with something less skinned (the post bit in use now on the HW skin) It's unfixable due to the scaling problem.

[Tony G]

Isn't it just default? I don't see any change in the postbit..

[DR?@M W?@V?R]

ooo...i like them all...especially the purple haze one...i dont understand why you made the layout different in some of them though...

x

[Tony G]

They are just different styles though, they don't all need seperate layouts.

[d2alio]

hehe yea it was definitely a pun to get attention. That site is still actually very plain. The creatures header is nice and a bit different, but everything else is the default template with graphics on it.

I don't really think there are any forums that I've seen that can be considered truly as something different. I guess because when people design and code they are coding to "fit" the vb setup rather than that coding to completely change it.

But I might have something for you guys that's a bit different launching soon. "The most heavily altered"? Probably not. A bit different? Definitely.

[Tony G]

Yes, if you want it to be more modified, modify it more. Lol. :D

[platoon]

I agree with saintdog, i cant see a huge ammounts of modifactions, although, when doin it yourself it seem to be alot more than suspected.

Some real nice sites coming along well here...

[7alem]

very nice forum.

i like ( Homeworld ) style

it's very nice and great work :)