vB-RC3 + CSS = ?

[maximux1]

Hello all -

We've recently upgraded our network of sites to the vb3.6rc releases and have completely customized our sites using CSS. I think it's rather unique and would like to have a few honest reviews from some folks so we could polish anything that stll needs work.

However - due to the "nature" of the website, Marco van Herwaarden has asked that I request you to PM me for the URL. Im ok with this and would like to invite anyone would would like to have a look at this 3 board integration using CSS to PM me here.

Thanks for the opportunity!

Max

[PennylessZ28]

Why? Is it becuase your sites are all about Marijuana

[maximux1]

Yup, it's a site about Marijuana.

Although, you wont find us promoting the use of Marijuana. What you will find us doing is promoting information about Marijuana and the Drug War in general. However, that is not allowed here.

I'd love to get your feedback on the new integrations, though!

Whatdoyasay?!?

[peterska2]

Hi, I've taken a look at your site and these are my comments.

Firstly, it's very green. Green is good, but with the black active tab background, it doesn't seem to be very smooth. The black background, especially when you get towards the bottom of the page, gives it an unfinished look IMO. Personally, I would consider using a different color for the active tab page background.

With regards to your navigation, I love the way that you have done your tabs. It is very simplistic, yet very effective.

One thing I find very effective is that the last 5 posts from each of your major forum tabs are shown on each one, enabling easy access to new topics regardless of which forum you are on.

Going into your actual threads, I like your simplistic, to the point, style of buttons. Nothing over heavy there or graphic intensive, just nice and plain and what you need to know. Your postbit is very clean, every matches nicely, and it has a good flow to the page. I particulary like your rank images, they are very fitting for your site.

Looking at your member profiles, I was almost expecting to see something a little different from the default template. When I got there, I was rather disappointed to find that they are bog standard default. Perhaps a little sprucing up of these would be in order, it certainly wouldn't hurt.

The only other thing I found very distracting is the sheer amount of adverts that you have on each page. It is almost impossible to look at any part of the page without having at least one banner add being shown to you. This is one thing that I particularly detest and if I was looking at your site with a view towards signing up, it would probably stop me from doing so. In saying that though, it is important that your site breaks even especially as it is rather a big site and so will have high running costs.

One final point to make, which is a much more general and site wide one, than in repect of particular page. While viewing your site to do this review for you, on three occassions the server timed out. while not important for this purpose, if I was a general user who had found your site by some other means, it would most likely cause me to close my browser and go elsewhere hence costing you traffic which is potential members.

[maximux1]

Originally Posted by peterska2

Hi, I've taken a look at your site and these are my comments.

Excellent, THANK YOU!

Firstly, it's very green. Green is good, but with the black active tab background, it doesn't seem to be very smooth. The black background, especially when you get towards the bottom of the page, gives it an unfinished look IMO. Personally, I would consider using a different color for the active tab page background.

That's an interesting point and something I had not considered. That darker color background on the green was kindof an after-thought as the first background was just too bright and got complaints from the red-eye crowd... I'll play with that some and see if I can get a better color that also goes with the tab background. Thanks for the tip!

With regards to your navigation, I love the way that you have done your tabs. It is very simplistic, yet very effective.

The integration of each of the communitities was the driving factor on this nav system, thanks!

One thing I find very effective is that the last 5 posts from each of your major forum tabs are shown on each one, enabling easy access to new topics regardless of which forum you are on.

This has increased pageviews and registrations across each community! It's based on a caching system that writes out the data for each forum every 5 minutes, saving a ton of db load. This is the single best improvement in my opinion.

Going into your actual threads, I like your simplistic, to the point, style of buttons. Nothing over heavy there or graphic intensive, just nice and plain and what you need to know.

ALL CSS - there's barely any grahics, other than very simple gradient backgrounds that make up those CSS buttons

Your postbit is very clean, every matches nicely, and it has a good flow to the page. I particulary like your rank images, they are very fitting for your site.

the idea on this was to just keep is lean and clean. We're going for the smallest pageload time we can because of our ad situation

Looking at your member profiles, I was almost expecting to see something a little different from the default template. When I got there, I was rather disappointed to find that they are bog standard default. Perhaps a little sprucing up of these would be in order, it certainly wouldn't hurt.

Yeah - this is an area that you are REALLY gonna like. However, we're still working on it and it's a ways off. Just think about a customized homepage with RSS/Forum Posts/Email "custom profile fields". This particular idea is more of a profile addon that a profile replacement, though. Again, thanks for the tip - we're really looking forward to getting out of RC and seeing some 3.6 products released!

Perhaps something like a myspace homepage using some mod_rewrite OR even wildcard DNS to give them a cool domain name to go with it... nice idea!

The only other thing I found very distracting is the sheer amount of adverts that you have on each page. It is almost impossible to look at any part of the page without having at least one banner add being shown to you. This is one thing that I particularly detest and if I was looking at your site with a view towards signing up, it would probably stop me from doing so. In saying that though, it is important that your site breaks even especially as it is rather a big site and so will have high running costs.

Yeah - there's the big problem my friend. It's kindof hard to find advertisers for a site that covers my subject area, ya know? So, Here's what I've done...

First we created a custom usergroup - think like a subscriber group, but not using the vB subscription system because paypal wont take our account - paypal is HORRIBLE! Anyways, my bank and Authorize.net have no problem so we've integrated Modernbill5 into the site - well, not fully yet, but it's getting close. The end game is to have MB update the usergroup of the userid that buys through MB using a creditcard.

Why signup? Two Words... Adless Interface. All advertisements are wrapped in code to check is_member_of() and hides all the ads, on all the sites, everywhere. The price is good considering it comes with SSL, larger storage sizes, etc... I released a little code to show how to redirect an SSL connection to your subscription page...perhaps you saw that.

But, yes - I agree -theres a lot of ads but there's also a lot of content and a lot of expenses. The entire interface was actually designed AROUND the ad spots - it's a business website and it pays bills before anything else.

One final point to make, which is a much more general and site wide one, than in repect of particular page. While viewing your site to do this review for you, on three occassions the server timed out. while not important for this purpose, if I was a general user who had found your site by some other means, it would most likely cause me to close my browser and go elsewhere hence costing you traffic which is potential members.

Yes, you couldnt be more right - yet again. Unfortunately, do to the nature of my site we frequently are at the mercy of DDOS attacks. We've gotten pretty good at mitigating the effects rather quickly, but it still requires at least one apache and mysql restart which is never what we wish to do.

Man, I REALLY appreciate your comments! THANK YOU. I would like to ask, however, did you notice the color tool at the top of the page? It allows you to select between 4 style modes of the site. And one other thing, did you happen to view the source on that? The only reason I ask is those are two things folks usually comment on, the CSS Style integration and the lack of HTML tables.

Thanks again! I really appreciate it!

Max