Why vBulletin styles are so 90's style?
 

Hello,

Starting on the vBulletin.org theme, going through the Styles gallery for VB5, I just see a lot of oldish styles. Almost look like 90's websites and layouts.

Is there any valid reason why clean and spaced-layouts aren't being used? Damn, I love vBulletin but with all those awful themes out there it is almost impossible to create an appealing community.

Sorry If i'm being too straight, however I just can't find a reason this is happening.

Am I the only feeling this?

You dont have to use if you dont like you can buy one there are many sites out there that sell them

Can you give me some examples please?

I know I don't have to use them, however I would like to, but if they were somewhat cleaner than they are currently.

Have you searched on google yet

Here's the thing I notice about most styles, on any forum platform, not just vBulletin. And not just free, but also premium styles. They almost always closely resemble the default style as much as they can. And the default style is, well, not really intended to be the best. It's meant to be vanilla.

Scripts are what they are, and you have to work with what you've got. Look at phpBB styles. They all look like phpBB. Look at xenForo styles. They all look like xenForo. That's not to say that this is anyone's fault. It's just to say that to really push the design beyond the limitations of the forum script is a lot of work. For free designers, that's probably too much work for just a freebie. And for premium designers, that's probably less efficient for them to put out and make any money off of. At least to their way of thinking.

And then you have the mentality that your forum should work well before (or instead of) making it look pretty. I, personally, don't agree that either of those elements should be neglected as a matter of good standards. But for the beleaguered admin, he's only going to choose one of those when it comes down to the wire. And I believe this mentality has shaped just how far designers will go when it comes to really pushing for innovative design. In other words, they don't see anyone besides a few like us, prioritizing it. So they don't bother.

Yes. A lot of the paid ones are not very pretty tho.

A great opinion.

I am using a concurrent board software in another community I've running, I was obliged to make a lot of modifications by myself. I really don't mind doing them, as I program in PHP and do some work in HTML/CSS, however I was just looking for clean themes for a new community, and it is almost impossible to find decent ones without wasting time on "cleaning a theme".

Then you could always hire someone to design the theme the way you want it. :)

I've seen some great VB4 and VB5 styles, you just have to look really hard for them, Exaltic do some great VB4 styles that are way beyond a default tweak or two.

Them problem is you have to be willing to pay, and by that I don't mean $30 -$50, I mean start at $450 and you can get a really different custom style, it's all down to price really.

Personally I've seen really terrible themes on really successful forums, so a custom theme is no guarantee of a successful forum.

http://www.thefootballforum.net/

http://www.footballforums.net/forums/

Both of those are on page one of google for "football forum" and one is the default with no customisation at all !

Late mid to end of 2000's, but certainly not 90's. This is based on the coding itself. :)

The 90's were the best and worst times of my life! I would love to go back so I have no problem with 90's themes.

Personally though I do not really agree that current themes look 90ish. As someone posted above unless you are willing to do custom work or pay big bucks to have it done most free themes will close to stock.

Or, unless, maybe, some designer somewhere is willing to change the way things are done. <whistle>

Maybe because the limpwristic, OCD & ADD-appealing "web 2.0" crap looks like hammered dogshit?

I really cannot get into the debate of what looks good and what looks bad, but I can say that a site's design definitely impacts the site scalability or on smaller sites: server load. I had always thought web 2.0 was suggested to overall meet these issues, not really how nice the site looked.

Plus, I have a terrible time just choosing a color. :)

I couldn't "like" your post because I liked another of yours recently.

You nibbled around the edges of my point. 1.) Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder and 2.) Serviceability, scalability and low server load go hand in hand with simplicity of design and how heavily a given platform is modded, no matter the platform. It is what you make it.

I say bring back the 80's themes or start them.

I think most forums are or should be about content and stability and of course security and loading quickly. I think many forums are over done with too much emphasis on mods and themes. I mean look at this site for instance. It has a nice clean and simple theme but the content is solid and there is a ton of it.

Algore was only starting on his invention of the internet back then. There existed things such as pay phone booths, tune-up places, film developing cubes in mall parking lots, cassette audio tapes and machines, and a plethora of other antiquities now gone the way of the Dodo.:D

Ideas for a vBulletin style in that?

Try this theme.. http://www.trafficunit.com/support/forum.php?styleid=3

I mentioned something about a payphone to my 9 year old nephew a couple weeks ago in a conversation and he asked me what it was. :p Boy did I feel old after that.

Yeah, an 80s forum may be a hit!

Any we cannot forget the hair and make up bands and all the good music back then! I graduated in 86 and I still miss those Van Halen songs! I miss the big cars too! I do not miss the mullet though and at one point I had a tail growing off the back of my head. lol I have not seen anyone with one of those in a long time! i still do not know how one would make a theme though to represent that era but I am all for it. :)

I'll put it this way. Every site is lacking something, and it can be any combination of ignorance, negligence or necessity. It's not right or wrong. It's going to reflect the administrator's strengths and preferences. (And finances. Don't forget finances.) So it will be lacking in areas of design, performance, popularity, consistency or conformance. The only things that are essential are the things that particular admin is trying to accomplish. And it might be different from what another admin wants.

But, again, it's not right or wrong. It's just the way it is. So while you can have a functional, popular board. You could have horrid graphic design. Or you may have solid, innovative styling and minimal activity. I don't think either, or any of the other possible combinations thereof, are wrong. I just think achieving a balance of all it is something to aspire to. I sort of look at it like Walter Disney looked at Disneyland. Every minor detail mattered as much as every major detail, which ultimately contributed to the overall experience.

Well said. I agree 100%.

Some forums fit better with a flashy theme and others can just use plain Jane. There is no right and wrong as you said. It is just about what appeals to your users. On a game site then something flashier may be suitable and on a web dev site simple and plain works. The bottom line though is that a theme alone is not going to make the site no matter how nice it looks.