White Text Dark Background? arrggghhh!

[SVTCobraLTD]

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

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

[Taragon]

Originally Posted by Princeton

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/

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.

[Rapscallion]

Originally Posted by Brad

Do you have a hard time reading this page?

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/

[Dream]

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)

[GSeybold]

makes me sea sick

[Ryan Ashbrook]

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.

[harmor19]

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

[Taragon]

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 )

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