Corvette Valley

[doggy1]

Hi everyone. I discovered the wonderful world of hacks and built our forum from the original default vbulletin to this.

I am a newbie to hacks and I am loving it. You guys and ladies who write these hacks are amazing and thank you for offering your talents to others.

Well, here is our site www.corvettevalley.com

Check it out and let me know what you think.

:cheers:

[Sean S]

Hi there and welcome

nice try on the skin, there is a couple of things that you need to improve in my opinion. One, you need to definetly work on a better navigation system, your navigation and main links are very scatterd around and could cause confusion to your new members/visitors, not mentioning that it covers a lot of space, almost one/half of the whole window. And maybe try to redo the header and adjust the size of it to the width of your forums,

good luck

[doggy1]

Thank you for your input. It is most appreciated. I gotta look into making this less complicated. We have a lot to offer. Maybe I should eliminate some of the redundant stuff off the navbars.

[peterska2]

Hi there,

I've just been taking a look at your Black Lagoon Skin (I did notice you have a large number available).

Good use of the double navigation bar. I've seen that way used a number of times, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but you pull it off well with this style.

Just below the navbar you have this text

THE VALLEY'S HOTTEST TOPICS!!!!! How Come??? - (39 replies)
Interesting gremlin....of a sort - (33 replies)
just saying hi - (21 replies)
At this very moment... - (19 replies)

The first bit, which is in a blue font, is impossible to read on a black background, so I would lighten that up significantly.

Good use of the postbit_legacy. I really like your online/offline icons. Also the random gallery images everywhere except the portal and forumhome are very well used.

Finally, one thing I did notice, your links on your navbar (the breadcrumb bit) is not correctly configured. Clicking on your forum title returns me to your portal not your forumhome. It's easy to fix, there is a setting in your vBOptions for the filename of your forums index. You just need to update it from index to vb3index and it will then work correctly.

[Gio~Logist]

Not bad. Here's my input on this:

- For the header, try incorporating the navigation a little more. Right now it seems as if your navigation on the header is just a bit dull on text. How about making the header a little bigger and having a navigation bar on it?

- The are where you have new threads listed should be in a table so that it's more legible.

- Postbit is nice, put together well.

- Background i'm not to fond of. However, it works well with this skin.

[doggy1]

Originally Posted by peterska2

Hi there,

I've just been taking a look at your Black Lagoon Skin (I did notice you have a large number available).

Good use of the double navigation bar. I've seen that way used a number of times, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but you pull it off well with this style.

Just below the navbar you have this text

The first bit, which is in a blue font, is impossible to read on a black background, so I would lighten that up significantly.

Good use of the postbit_legacy. I really like your online/offline icons. Also the random gallery images everywhere except the portal and forumhome are very well used.

Finally, one thing I did notice, your links on your navbar (the breadcrumb bit) is not correctly configured. Clicking on your forum title returns me to your portal not your forumhome. It's easy to fix, there is a setting in your vBOptions for the filename of your forums index. You just need to update it from index to vb3index and it will then work correctly.

Thank you so much for your detailed evaluation! That's awesome! It means a lot to me. I really learned a lot in so little time. And I have you folks to thank. Thank you for the breadcrumb tip. I had some members asking me about that. I will check the vbulletin opions for that setting. This would be a great fix.

As for the Blue Topic. I really would like to change that. But simply do not know how. It was a hack so maybe there are color settings in the hack itself????? I have to look into that.

Thanks for the postbit legacy input. We do offer our members many style choices and we are testing the hacks in the default one you see when you first come to the site. Once we decide on which hacks we like we will add them to the other styles.

Yeah, we needed that extra navigational bar. The way things are going we may need to add a third at the bottom perhaps. I ran into that hack over the weekend!

Thanks again for your input, it was greatly appreciated!

Originally Posted by gio~logist

Not bad. Here's my input on this:

- For the header, try incorporating the navigation a little more. Right now it seems as if your navigation on the header is just a bit dull on text. How about making the header a little bigger and having a navigation bar on it?

- The are where you have new threads listed should be in a table so that it's more legible.

- Postbit is nice, put together well.

- Background i'm not to fond of. However, it works well with this skin.

Hi there! Thanks for the input. I must say the header is our biggest weakness. The header on my screen appears to go across the entire page but I recently saw on another computer it is quite tiny and really needs work. I am not certain I understand how you have a navigation bar on the header.

Also, is there a hack where the header will stretch out to the size of the person's computer that is viewing the site? That would be great if there is.

Again, thanks so much for checking out the site!

[Gio~Logist]

I normally don't design for free. However, i admire your desire for perfecting your forums and figured a little of my time wouldn't hurt

Here's a little something i came up with if you'd like to use it.

First just upload the attached images to your images' misc folder and then make the edit below.

Find:

<table border="0" width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" align="center">
<tr>
	<td align="center"><a href="vb3index.php"><img src="images/misc/cvbanner4b.jpg" border="0" alt="Corvette Valley" /></a></td>
		</td>
</tr>
</table>

Replace it with:

<table border="0" width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" align="center" background="$stylevar[imgdir_misc]/headerbg.jpg">
<tr>
	<td align="center"><a href="vb3index.php"><img src="$stylevar[imgdir_misc]/header.jpg" border="0" alt="Corvette Valley" /></a></td>
		</td>
</tr>
</table>

Once/If that's done, let me know. I will see if some other little changes can be done to make it better, as i didn't have time to see exactly how it would look on the site.

[doggy1]

OMG! This is so nice of you and most appreciated!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you so much!
Let me see if I can get that image onto the site. This is so awesome!
:banana:

In my header template I see this:

<table border="0" width="$stylevar[outertablewidth]" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" align="center">
<tr>

I used the Title Image input below that template to import the banner. I think I am supposed to change this code but not certain.

But what do I do for the "Title Image?"

Also, it took me awhile to figure out what you meant by the navigational bar. This is a DUH on me. LOL! Those are not true navigational buttons. When you click on them they don't go anywhere. One of our members designed it for us and just put that up I guess to describe what we are all about. Unless of course the template you designed makes them into true navigational links.
I like to "go for it" so I am gonna change the code and see what happens.

Okay, I imported everything. Changed the code. I do want to tell you that you are dealing with a novice here. I guess I am what you call an "advanced" novice. LOL! I have come a long way but still have a lot to learn.

Well I replaced the code alone ended up with a red x on top of the existing header. So it was like having a double header. So what I did was just imported your design into the system with our other headers and put back our original code which I provided below. The title image was set to point to your header. It is up now and looks very sharp.
Does this modification make the header larger and wider? That is our biggest problem. Folks see a little mini header at the top of the screen. On mine it fits perfectly. And I imagine if i stretch it that it will look good on their computer screen but on mine it will be way too long. Banners are my biggest weakness. I bang the wall knowing that I can import a radio into our site but can't even design a proper banner. LOL!

I also checked out your website. We may need to talk.

Here is our current code:
<!-- logo -->
<a name="top"></a>
<table border="0" width="$stylevar[outertablewidth]" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" align="center">
<tr>
<td align="center"><a href="$vboptions[forumhome].php$session[sessionurl_q]"><img src="$stylevar[titleimage]" border="0" alt="$vboptions[bbtitle]" /></a></td>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<!-- /logo -->

<!-- content table -->
$spacer_open

$_phpinclude_output

[Gio~Logist]

You are very much welcome, and feel free to pm or email me.

As for instructions, replace this:

<table border="0" width="$stylevar[outertablewidth]" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" align="center">
<tr>
<td align="center"><a href="$vboptions[forumhome].php$session[sessionurl_q]"><img src="$stylevar[titleimage]" border="0" alt="$vboptions[bbtitle]" /></a></td>
</td>
</tr>
</table>

With this:

<table border="0" width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" align="center" background="$stylevar[imgdir_misc]/headerbg.jpg">
<tr>
	<td align="center"><a href="vb3index.php"><img src="$stylevar[imgdir_misc]/header.jpg" border="0" alt="Corvette Valley" /></a></td>
		</td>
</tr>
</table>

[doggy1]

Hi there!
I made the replacement you suggested and I got a red x at the top of the screen. I don't know why it is. I did go ahead and put back the original code to put the header back, but I don't know what I am doing wrong. Sniff Sniff.