White Text Dark Background? arrggghhh!
 

I've seen many designs with white text / dark background - many times they look great. Nice. Yea, great eye-candy.

But, did you know it can hurt conversion?

In your case (as a forum admin), this means lower registrations, less threads, less comments, decreased pageviews, less clicks, etc

Here's a great illustration why you should reconsider your white text on dark background design...

http://www.ironicsans.com/owmyeyes/

hey hey... my new design (my usual site) will be white based, with black text... plain and simple... white spaces is the essence. no icons, at least not everywhere... i hate having heavy colors on my sites, and usually prefer working like there would be no window in the browser... we have some apps on Mac that are window-less, so we see the content wrapped i na cool way to integrate our environment, instead of the opposite. that's what i focus on now!

Yep, the lighter colored schemed forums aren't some of the most active you see around for a reason.

My poor eyes :(

I've never been a fan of White on black Backgrounds either, that page sums up why quite well.

Interesting...

What you have displayed there is simply a black background with white text. No images to break the colours, no nothing to break the two tone colour. so I guess the statement is fairly accurate (though this would depend on the content). You set permissions so that users would need to register then they will register. You add a few icons, borders and such and you can turn this monstrosity into a visually appealing piece. Infact, I reackon I could get away with designing grey-scaled icons and still make the white text on a black background visually acceptable. I've done it.

I guess this could be fun by setting a challenge and have members design a template only able to use white text, black background and allowed to design icons etc to show the difference between the page you linked to and a more visual members attempt by showing how much better a few icons make.

I've known this for a while, and that's a great demonstration of how not to use light text on dark backgrounds ;)

shelly,

The point of the illustration is that readers are affected by the color choice of a website design.

Even if you add more colors or break up the text with objects, etc - you are still taking a risk.

Let's say you do all of the above (as you posted)..
Now, instead of affecting 85% of your visitors - it will now only affect 20%. You still have 20% of your visitors feeling uncomfortable - headaches, etc; not staying long; leaving your site; etc.

Yes, these numbers are provided only for illustrative purposes...
But loosing 50%, 20%, 15%, 5%, even 1% is a lot - especially, when one's goal is to increase income coming from the site.

To many site owners, conversion is the key to success.
The first thing one can do to improve conversion is to ensure they do not have a white text on dark background design.

Black text on a white background is just as bad for my eyes, maybe worse. I've always preferred dark backgrounds though as they are easier on my own eyes. Although I will agree that white text on a black background is just as bad.

Do you have a hard time reading this page? ;)

yes, I do - not as much as the previous illustration though

the question you should be asking is...

Where you able to read the whole page?

my answer - No (I did try though)

Thoughts on this one?? http://www.pennmustangs.com/forums/index.php

Its a dark gray background with light blue and white text through-out.

It of course does suck a bit, although you?d have to keep in mind it?s written as a newspaper article.
Of which the layout often sucks :)

It?s like the Starwars movie intro; make it difficult to read, and because of that people will at least give it a try.
I even think because of this about 30-50% of the people who have read this thread, currently 146, have actually read the whole story, simply because they wanted to see how it ends.

He actually explains it about halfway down this page.

Rapscallion

That's an extreme example. Every skin I make is dark, it's easier on the eyes. And, of course, more metal. \m/

very interesting, one more reason to do lighter layouts nowadays as I'm inclined lately (with no dark backgrounds).

btw this dark blue style here on vb.org could use some whitening (no offence to anyone! just saying)

makes me sea sick:)

I almost never use a dark background layout anymore.

The new skin for my forum is darker, yes, but most of the text is on a table with a lighter background, making it easy (for me at least) to read.

I'm a racist so I like white text on a white background.

We currently use a dark style at DIE16 Sniper Clan 1, 2
I have to say, after loads of modifications (working on going table-less right now) it's the best one we had since a couple of years (our phpbb2 plus era :D)

This is also a great site for white on black designs http://www.lightondark.com/