Why are Styles so Difficult in VB?
 

Sorry if I sound negative, but why are Styles such an elusive thing in VB?

How come other forum software come pre-installed with many nice styles, yet with VB you get a single style and you have to either purchase commercial ones or download ones made by other people which most of the time seem to be in some kind of Beta Stage.

I would like to give my users the option of lets say the Default Style bu in different colors....Green / Blue / Red / Brown / Purple etc.. without drastically changing the look.

Or maybe some Holiday ones, like for Christmas / New Year / Valentines / Halloween etc..

Again Sorry if I sound negative, but this is the only aspect of VB thats got me a bit frustrated.

Wrong Forum

Wrong forum :p

And well, vB is commercial software, sadly you also see that in the amount of styles available, though I must say that the most available themes for vB look a way better than the thousands of small variations on the standard phpBB style, some got a little different images, bit different color but that's it usually.

I agree, but like Phlex said...

Jelsoft should have some sort of certification for ppl to release commercial skins and have to meet certain criteria etc.

Jelsoft should also buy some of the more popular skins to resell and they can support them instead. I would feel more comfortable buying from Jelsoft knowing they would be around and knowing they would implement the dot fixes in a timely manner and correctly.

but those are just pipe dreams I guess.

D

Moved to the correct forum.

On the subject, I rather have vBulletin spend there time further developing their software rather than working on styles. There is a huge number of free skins available through here or on other sites, and if that isn't good enough there is always custom skins. That is just my opinion though...

Also, I don't know of any forum softwares that come with pre-installed skins other then a default one...?

Why can't they do both. Hire a coupe of ppl to work on them.


Yes, there are free skins, but are these gonna be supported through the life of the product? doubtful.
Custom skins, same issue. I had one made for $400 for 3.0, you think I could contact the guy to get it updated for 3.5? Nope.

You should be able to contact him or someone and have them upgrade it to vBulletin 3.5 for a small fee, it shouldn't be that expensive :squareeyed:

Maybe that is exactly the reason why it is not done.

I know I should, but herein lies the problem. I was willing to pay. I never even got updates for the 3.0x series either.

why what's not done?

The reason why Jelsoft don't ship more styles with vB. It would cost them a lot of money to hire people to keep them up2date.

Agreed with above, its pointless for them to waste their efforts making different styles. Customize your site for YOUR SITE.

It isn't that difficult.

The styles available on the 3.x.x series have been way better than in the past, jelsoft allways give template change info so you can easily update them yourselves. Either do that or get yourself a stylist.

I never asked for nor do I care for Jelsoft to ship vB with more styles. It would be nice if them made their own (to sell) or bought some to resell. By selling they bring in more $$ which will pay for the extra help.

@nitro: I don't have the time nor am I a graphic artist, and like I said, I did have some one design me one. Read my posts.

@HR3rdGen: ditto above plus how is it poitnless to make more styles and make money from them? :ermm:

If you have had one made then you just need to update it or get it updated.

With base color changes Jelsoft have given in their admin CP full access to all colors and now even with a pallette You can do as you wish simply by creating a child of the default and flicking through the pallette and do what you want.

More elaborate styles will allways be an external thing, as these encroach into template modifications and therefore have gone beyond the defacto standard install.

Most forum software that has sevaral packaged styles are not usually commercial solutions and often the extra styles in these have originated from 3rd parties aswell but been taken on board.

About my only criticism of Jelsoft for styles is the dir structure which imo and I stated ages ago before v3 gold was released that front end styles should have a default style images folder ie /styles/default this would set the standard for /styles/newstyle1 etc. All that would be needed then is for stylists to agree to use /styles/thisstyle/misc for extra images so its code can be called via the standard variable where as many do not and use some non descript dir. I also found it ironic that Jelsoft slated the idea but used the very idea for cp styles :D