As a real 'newbie' to all things 'Forum' I have a couple of observations I would like to make...
As a non-techie potential 'user' I don't really mind what drives the programme, be it Perl or PHP. I would also ideally like it to work with the minimum of configuration, and look drop dead gorgeous 'Out of the Box' (Figuratively speaking of course) W3T has some really neat and useful features, and from browsing this forum, some really good support and loyal and dedicated users. The licensing is also suitable for my needs.
In comparison vBulletin seems to lack some of the nice features present in W3T, and the Licensing isn't quite as friendly as I would like. I also *tend* to like the idea of PHP3, but where VBulletin REALLY blows me away is that it LOOKS so darn good when you play with the demo site! I just KNOW that my customers will love it, even though it may not have all the nice features of W3T.
I have checked as many sites as I can using each programme, and ALL the VBulletin sites LOOK GOOD. I hate to say it, but the W3T sites look, well, not as 'sexy', - DOSy even. Why doesn't YOUR demo site, by default, look gorgeous? Even some of the 'customised' sites don't do your programme any favours. Others are quite interesting and lively, yet they still lack the 'finish and polish' of the vBulletin demo site.
Why do you do this? W3T has everything I want, except the gorgeous interface that I need to impress my clients. You have put Rolls Royce quality and engineering, satnav, minibar, leather seats and CD quad surround sound into a Ford Prefect bodyshell!
My clients only see the bodyshell and a competent piece of engineering that they can use. I don't have the time or patience to build a Rolls Royce bodyshell around your chassis and engine. If my customer wants a pink RR, then I'll paint it pink, but that's all... BUT, I still want the satnav and minibar, leather seats etc.
Having worked hard to hook my clients with the Bodyshell, I want to delight and suprise them with all the 'hidden' extras. That way they'll stay with me...
As you can guess, I like the features of W3T, but the front end lets you down. This is the major reason for my serious consideration of vBulletin. If you could marry the quality look of vBulletin with your Rolls Royce engine, then you wouldn't have any real opposition...
This is a fairly common point. It used to be UBB, now it seems to be a new one. Believe me, I have never had the intention of making WWWThreads unappealing[]/w3timages/icons/laugh.gif[/]. But I am not one to go and copy the look of another program either. If anyone makes some suggestions on an interface improvement I am all for it, but I don't want this program to end up looking like a clone.
So, I'm open to any and all suggestions. What can be done to improve the visual attractiveness of this product? If anyone is handy with an html editor, or whatever and you have some suggestions, make some sample changes.
On a side note, maybe a nice stylesheet would be a good starting point. So, if anyone is a color genius and you think you have a nice professional style sheet that works with 5.1, send me a link so I can have a look see.
From running wwwthreads for about 1 1/2 years my users love it.
They came from a UBB forum and they all say they love the wwwthreads forum.
Style sheets are cool as you can set up different ones and the visitors can pick the one they like. I hope to work on a way to allow users to upload their own styles sheets when Scream gets the PHP version done. (Since I am a PHP programmer and not a perl guy)
You can NOT beat the supportive community here and Scream is great and swiftly fixes any problem you run into. (which are very few)
Yes that site does have a UBB while I tweak on wwwthreads 5.1b.
I ran another site for the past 1 1/2 years with wwwthreads 4.01 PRO and those users were converted from UBB. (that site now closed and I am going to use the forum for Clickteam)
When I am happy with the way I have wwwthreads setup Clickteam will use it full time. I got "stuck" with that UBB from the last guy. Right now I just have some of the regular forum user testing it out and giving me their feedback. While the graphics people work on some colors and such.
UBB is killing our server -- at least that is what the hosting company tells me. We are running a Cobalt server and the UBB causes the CPU to overload when the forum gets busy.
Please do not think this link is meant as UBB ad -- its not. It is an advertisment for Clickteam soon to convert over to wwwthreads.
Sorry for any confusion as wwwthreads is the best forum package. People who know me know how much I love the wwwthreads package.
I am impressed by Scream's response... Most of my clients are Professionals in some sphere or another, but are mostly NOT web savvy. They go by what they SEE, ease of use, does it do the job, and what does it cost. That's all they're really interested in. Viewer selectable style sheets are a GREAT idea. How about establishing a Library of styles for people to d/l? Perhaps the same with the front end?
A stylesheet library will be going into the resource center shortly where users can contribute their stylesheets for others to download.
As for the look of the program, do you or does anybody have any suggestions on what can be done to improve it? Obviously there needs to be some interface tweaks, and I'm open to any serious suggestions.
Yes, I'd have to agree.... as a designer. But this forum is pretty good... some of the others (complex and simple) are simply disastrous. Sure, more could be done along the lines of making the forum more pleasing aesthetically, but it really isn't bad in my eyes... it is simple, which works well for me. Sure, it could use some tricks, but I don't think it's so bad. []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/] Well not after the table borders were introduced, anyway. []/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/] []/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/]
I believe one of the biggest turn offs of the WWWThreads Demo is the ugly header in plain text. People want you to prove them that their forum can look nice. If you give them an ugly front page, they will probably leave. I´ve made a little "something" to give you an idea of what to do, or to use it if you like. []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/] See attached file.
Hey, I like that. That's the type of suggestions I am looking for. I realize the look is good enough for some, but I think you are correct in that the demo site needs to be more appealing.
Perl and Php are both real cool. I've always liked perl, and the more I've been researching php, I'm probably going to like it more. But nothing beats a good front end like flash, java, perhaps asp. Leave the competent perl and php for backstage work, I say. Flash interfacing MySQL through php is the way to go, in my opinion.
Just learning flash myself and preparing to learn php, I've had a few ideas for projects involving W3T. If anyone else may be interested, let me know. Collaboration rocks. []/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/]
Hi again It's most gratifying that my comments have resulted in such positive responses, and that nice new header.
If you change your demo site, be sure to change the 'paid-up' downloadable copies of the software. Don't let your customers see something on your demo site, and then allow them to download something different. Others have made this mistake and it really hacks people off. Give 'em what they see, not what it says in the small print. I speak from experience. OK, maybe I'll buy W3T for one of my other sites! Having dealt with the opposition, I find a totally different approach on this site, one that is most refreshing.
Keep working on the front end, keep one eye on the opposition (As if you aren't already!) and lets see some real cool improvements to the programme.
Well, the problem is always compatibility. For example my site relies much on Flash, even the "edit post" in my forum with it´s flash toolbar for inserting markup. But so far I have not put on my server any flash 4 or 5 files, only Flash 3. This is due to wanting to have the site compatible with most browsers. And I feel it is near the time to be able to put flash4. This would be really cool. One thing that I have wanted to do is make the main menu bar of w3t in Flash. I understand flash 4 can take the variables and so on as if it was part of the html code, would you know how to do this? Maybe we can work on something cool...
As far as even MySQL interface in Flash, that would require flash 5, and I am not willing to go into that till at least one year flash 5 has been out, even though I think it would be great. Compatibility. []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]
Yes, it uses Eileens hack for inserting markup with one click, but making the links instead of being in the image, they are in the flash. So the real special thing is Eileens hack.
I havent made this available as I have it in Spanish and with some special icons for my site, but if you install Eileens hack then you can quickly turn it into flash if you want.
What I am really curious about is about the possibility of having the top menu bar in flash ("Forum Index | Search, etc." links), as some variables need to go through them and I´ve never worked with them in flash.
Just to set the record straight. Scream is well known to *never* keep an eye on the opposition - he's too busy writing original code. It's the Johnny-Come-Latelies, such as you've been suckered by, that do that. As for the bait and switch you encountered, you'll never get that here.
I agree totally. Flash 4 or higher will require the user to download (if they haven't already) the latest Macromedia flash player from their site, and this could lose your users. Javascript and/or Java applets may be the next best way to go front-end wise, until the internet browsers play catch up with all the third party folks (specifically macromedia). Director (shockwave) has some decent file input/output features for use with cgi scripts, but again, compatibility becomes an issue.
Scream: For whatever you may have in mind with working on, I'd suggest the following for your front-end design. Many things built-in to browsers and the like are generally square and rectangular, with corners and edges. Even graphics crop at rectangles, and alpha channels are sometimes required to rid yourself of the corners of the pics. Many designers are trying to make their sites as fluid as they can because of this. If you can, design toolbars with rounded corners and less-defined edges. Try getting rid of the dark blue background to your header pic and see how that looks. Frame the menu and forums with some sort of enclosed graphic (maybe enclosing some of the left and right sides as well) or design of some sort. You can insert images inside tables very easily []/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/] also.
In addition, a logo or theme of some kind wouldn't hurt. Maybe an "http://" made out of some sewing thread that leads to a thread ...erm... dowel thing the thread wraps around, the word escapes me at the moment. []/w3timages/icons/tongue.gif[/] A more manly logo might be some sort of enlarged bolt with the threads clearly showing - machinery, when done right, can really make a site look "technically" superior, in more ways than one. []/w3timages/icons/laugh.gif[/] You could adopt an entire theme based around something along those lines, something that involves community, communication, threads, world wide web, etc. I've noticed you've swayed toward the lighter, less obtrusive colors (pastel?). I've found I like the sharper, more deep colors of quantum and matrox's websites, and also possibly Macromedia's website as well (each are self-titled .com websites). And alas, AOL has the Internet by the nuts, so paying attention to where they're headed will be a good indication of what folks will be used to in the future as far as web design - look at their beta Netscape browser and you'll see the less square, lots of shadows type of look I've talked about.
In summary:
* Make your buttons round, oval, anything but rectangle. Make them in a format that support alpha channels (like gif), and put their labels inside of the buttons. * Try and cloak those tables so that their rigid straight lines aren't as noticeable, or surround the entire thing in some sort of pleasing framework, graphic or whatnot. * Make those headers and footers graphics, with perhaps some text inside of them (very little outside!), and make them share a common theme or look that you want your site to have (logos?). Some like the animated graphics on their webpage, but I find them damned annoying.
If you can find the time to do those three main things (and/or recruit help from users!), I would think that would improve this software vastly.
Thanks David. I really appreciate the suggestions. I spent about a year and half doing web design, but have gotten way out of the loop now.
One thing I would like to do is take the navigation menu and turn it into graphics so it only takes up a portion of the screen width. The reason being is I need some real estate to put in some things like [Print This Page], etc. So if I could use smaller graphics and maybe combine the send private/check private into a singular [My Page] or something like that, move the User List I could possibly only use half of the screen width for navigation. That would allow the other half to be used for extras.
The current color scheme is used because basically I don't really know what would look the best. I spend so much time with my nose buried in programming code that I haven't had the time to keep up with current web design trends.
I am getting a little desperate to make some visual improvements because this is really the only knock I have heard on the program. Features are great, look is kind of bland. So, your suggestions are very much appreciated.
So, what does everyone think? What's a good color scheme to go with? What about the other things David suggested? If anyone has any ideas now would be a great time to share[]/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/].
I am not sure the problem is of the "dominant color" choosen for WWWThreads. A site can look good no matter what the dominant color is, well, just about... []/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/]. If it had yellow tones we´d probably be asking if you are going through a yellow stage, and so on... Maybe it is true that it needs a re-design from scratch. Maybe create the wanted look without considering how difficult it would be to do so, and then, after that, see what can be done to get it done. So someone would have to design the wanted look for the forum, and then see how to get it done, instead of the other way around.
Anyways, I am very new to PHP, but from the looks at it, I am getting a hint that it will be really easy to re-design it, each one as we want it. So I am not really worried about that as I too would like to move to PHP when done.
I have my own personal style that if I get it done I believe it will be totally different, and I am guessing same with others. So what I would worry about the most would be for the script to really allow me to completely customize the looks. In that sense I would love to have an ugly plain text version of the PHP version, and just be able to give it the design I want.
Obviously, to this last point, it is a personal thing as I enjoy webdesigning, people who are not designers would obviously want a packaged good looking forum, so we are back to where we started... []/w3timages/icons/laugh.gif[/]
Could I send you a few w3ttheme files of color combos that I think would work a little better? Maybe you could put it to vote or something, out of the ones I submit? Or if other users want to submit some as well...
I am also going to be working on a new image set... that might look a little more 'modern' or something. []/w3timages/icons/smile.gif[/]
Yes, please do. This goes to anyone that knows web design. I am a programmer, I can handle getting the needed features in, but when it comes to the visual portion I can use any and all help. I will go any direction that would look the most pleasing.
Maybe we can complicate the thing a little, at the resource center have a script that grabs all the submitted styles and display them through a drop down box. Then we will be able to really see them, and vote on them right there.
But as I say, I believe it is not just a color thing. Once you have seen the most voted one for 3 weeks you will think another one is "more cool".
Scream is well known to *never* keep an eye on the opposition
I hope that's not entirely the case... Believe me, in customizing my forum, I have probably been to every competing product site to see what features they have that I want, how others have designed sites, etc... And it's mainly because I know what I want on my forums, but I'm always open to cool ideas. I've tried to build my system around w3t that will match and beat ubb, vbulletin and espn forums, and even w3t to some extent, and I think I've done it.
Right now the only thing vbulletin has that I don't is the info on the main page that shows total reg'd users / threads / topics, last member and active topics (at least the last time I looked). The only reason I don't have them implemented yet is that my site isn't even live yet and I don't want to show 5 topics on my main page... And since from what I've seen with vBulletin really being a UBB clone, there isn't anything UBB really has that I don't have. And as for espn, the only thing they have that I don't is their recommendation feature, where you can recommend posts as another alternative for rating them compared to views.
And I think there are plenty of things I have that one or another of these don't - quasi-subcategories, a useful working poll, linking to the last post from the forum listing, limiting posts to last x days, poster info on each message (which gets updated daily so as not to show old titles), linking to replies in flat mode (okay, it only works when there are two pages or less), special notes in forums with no posts yet or in last x days, error info trapping into a separate table, importing users from a flat text file and probably a few other things I have forgotten. And the only thing I'm really waiting on to launch is a little feedback from my visitors and for someone to finish up all new buttons/icons for me.
So, I'm open to any and all suggestions. What can be done to improve the visual attractiveness of this product?
Scream, you probably aren't going to like my answer, but my suggestion would be to hire a professional web/graphic designer to focus specifically on page layout, logo development, all that stuff and all of it together as a whole package... From what I've read here in the forums, you've probably lost sales to other products because of the look. And if you think that's the case, then it's probably worth investing some money in the design, and you can continue to focus specifically on the code, which it sounds like is what you would prefer doing.
Trying to change a header here, a color scheme there is only going to probably make it look worse, because there are too many different elements involved in this. You have a reasonably impressive client list (even if a few are running older versions) and a good look on your home page (although I'm not really partial to sites that use black backgrounds), but it sort of dies after your home page. And I'd probably dump the logo for vwdesigns on your home page since they appear to have closed shop, at least according to their site...
Yes, it is true that I make a point of not visiting other forums. Naturally I surf the web and have come across sites that use other forum products, but I don't go visiting the competition. Why? Because when you do, no matter how hard you try you are going to pick up something from their site and try to put it into yours. And then everything ends up looking the same. I've been developing WWWThreads for almost 4 years now, and anything that I've added has either come from my imagination or from a user suggestion. So, when someone suggests a feature that another forum has I'll try and implement it in my own way, not in how I saw it on another site.
It's just a personal thing with me I guess.[]/w3timages/icons/crazy.gif[/] Like Eileen said, the user's here keep me very well informed on what needs to be added[]/w3timages/icons/laugh.gif[/].
I've tried to work with a few professional designers and while they have had some good suggestions it has always wound up being something that wouldn't be good for a stock release. Again, as with the feature requests, I tend to heavily rely on the people that actually use the product. The users know what they need it to do and how it should look. Because they aren't going to suggest a change that is going to limit the functionality.
And I guess I am looking for more of a band-aid solution at this point. Like I said in another thread, it looks as if the PHP version will make templates a definite possibility so there is no use in gutting the thing at this point.
>>I would love to have an ugly plain text version of the PHP version, and just be able to give it the design I want.
I would LOVE that too. Perhaps one could be made available in the registered download area for people like us who prefer to do our own dressup. As it is, half our work goes into getting rid of the hardcoded layout before we can even start doing our own.
That will come. The initial port will have the same look as the PERL version. But, by the time I get done with the port I should have a good grasp on PHP and be able to dive into putting templates into it, which will make this very possible.
Very sound thinking. I've also noticed a trend over the years for everything on a webpage to get progressively smaller and neater. If I look back at stuff I did in the early days it looks hugely big, sprawling and crude by todays standards. We have narrower columns, smaller fonts and decidedly smaller graphics.
Yes, and if you do make a set of buttons for the menu bar, here is a suggestion. I would like to combine the "Edit Profile", "Send Private" and "Check Private" links into one button. Say something like a button called "My Page" or something of that nature. Need to clear up some screen real esate[]/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/].
Yeah, because you can do all 3 things from there anyway. So the buttons still need to be somewhat small, but this would help clean up the upper area for adding some of the new things.
For example, here are some buttons that I was thinking of for when you are logged out. some buttons
"My Page" sounds a little ambigous. Or maybe that's the idea, "what the hell is 'my page', I guess I'll click on it." []/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/] Something like "My Preferences" or "My Profile" would seem more consistent with general known terminology.
Well, it needs to be something that means alot. Because from this page, you check your private messages, you can send private messages, edit your profile. Eventually this will have your bookmarked threads as well. So, it's not necessarily just prefences or profile. Doesn't have to be called "My Page", so I'm open to ideas.
Very, very nice... although, small font looks nice to me, from a design point of view. []/w3timages/icons/wink.gif[/] I'll make something similar to that when I submit some style sheets... when I get the chance.
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