afterblur.com Completely Redesigned

[eckels2]

herlo.

I'm sure at least a few of you remember afterblur.com, the cartoony blue design... very graphic intensive, and very round looking? I posted about it a while back...

Well anyways, I've started redesigning the whole thing from scratch... a completely new design for a new version of vB. (I just upgraded from 2.2.7 to 2.3.2, not 3, it'll be a while before i jump on 3.) I decided to start a new thread here, since this version of the site will be basically nothing like the old site, and I didnt want anyone to confuse the two...

So anyways, I've begun working on it, and I'm pretty happy with the way it's come out so far... only a few pages are done so far, forum home, forum display, showthread, newposting templates, and a few others... I still have a lot to go... Some links also lead to pages that dont exist yet...

One of the things that I really have to go back and redo is the menu, which is currently the orange letters reversed from afterblur. I've decided I'm not too crazy about that design, and i'm gonna change it, but until then itll be as you see it.

http://232.afterblur.com

It's only a test board, so you can't register or anything, it's just so I can work on the design in peace.

Oh and Tony, before you mention anything about it being too dark, it's supposed to be dark.

Thanks in advance for your comments!

[Tony G]

Hehe, yes thats fine! ^_^

I love the background, could make the loading background color something else instead of that whiteish color.

I think you should allow some more room for the forum table. You could chop off a bit from the left-side tables and add it to the forum table. Should look better IMO.

Great job!

[d2alio]

I like it... nice job dude

[imported_iKwak]

I like http://afterblur.com more.

[MrNase]

me too
afterblur.com is really coooooooool!

the new one is too dark

[SaintDog]

Nice design, too scrunched though.

[eckels2]

Originally Posted by iKwak

I like http://afterblur.com more.

Well, while Afterblur.com is a fun design, that took me a LONG time to get off the ground... In the end it required so much hacking and editing to the php and templates, that at this point, if I wanted to upgrade, I couldn't even begin to think about redoing all that stuff again. Plus it's not worth it..

For example, the main forum display... With the Forum Pictures, rather than the main forum listing... Yeah it's cool looking, gives it a lot of color, but in the end, it confuses more users than intrigues, and In my opinion, hinders people's desire to post.

The other main problem is that blue theme takes way too long to load. I even made a lower bandwidth version that, while it helps, still loads very slow for them dialuppers. This new theme can be better configured to be low-bandwidth, so that the dialup people wont have to sit and watch images crawl onto the screen.

So yeah while the Blue theme was cool, and a lot of people thought it was pretty original, it's simply not practical, and after a year of having it as the main theme, I think it's time to say goodbye. I'm hoping this new theme will draw more users and board traffic will pick up, rather than drive them away with a big bulky theme.

[mx3]

I like it a lot ^_^ could use a little more space for the forums, but overall pretty good. Nice job ^_^

[null]

Hey!

It's been long time since I saw some good looking and original web site. Good job and good luck!