Petopia forum downtime

[Wain]

Our forum will be going down for some updates, most likely within the next 24 hours. Our current board software is more than a decade out of date and it's starting to show incompatibilities with the software of the server it runs on, so we badly need to update it! I've been putting this off until BfA was well underway and traffic had dropped.

I hope the update will be smooth and we'll be up and running again quickly. Maybe it'll take just an hour or two. But if there are ongoing problems I'll post something on the Petopia home page, and also tweet about it.

After the update the forum will look different. Our current default theme doesn't exist in the new board version, but someone has created a similar one that I can install. It will also look generic and it may take some time for me to even get the Petopia logo back (or maybe I'll be able to enable it right away).

I may also be able to install other themes for those who prefer them. Perhaps a dark theme? I'm unsure about "Lucid Lime" - does anyone still use that?

Anyway, aside from the downtime issue, the main point I wanted to convey is that it's possible things may look a little rough to begin with, but I'll work on improving the look once the software is updated and running smoothly.

[Vephriel]

Oooh, this will take some adjusting after having the forum looking one way all these years, but I'm looking forward to it. I'd love a nice dark theme!

[Wain]

Test. It seems to be working again.

[Anyia]

I'm feeling like quite the nub for asking, but how do I see which threads have new posts in them? There used to be that tiny yellow thing next to the title that I could click to instantly get to the new post, in addition to it letting me know that there was stuff unread there.

[Wain]

Sorry, I'm not sure yet . I'll add it to the list of stuff I have to get working with this new software.

[Ana]

It's not quite as easy to see now but the text document icon is a slightly different color on unread vs read. Working on mobile now

[Vephriel]

Oooh, this is looking slick so far.

One thing I'll comment on, the greyed-out signature images are throwing me off a bit, they feel like big clickable links with how they highlight with an outline and it's a bit distracting while scrolling through a thread and unintentionally hovering over them. Other than that though everything's looking really nice, and I'm excited to see what other themes we can find for this layout.

[Wain]

Oooh, this is looking slick so far.

One thing I'll comment on, the greyed-out signature images are throwing me off a bit, they feel like big clickable links with how they highlight with an outline and it's a bit distracting while scrolling through a thread and unintentionally hovering over them. Other than that though everything's looking really nice, and I'm excited to see what other themes we can find for this layout.

I noticed that too. It's weird :/ I'm looking into it.

[Vephriel]

No rush, I'm sure there's going to be a lot of little tweaks to go through during the initial conversion.

[GormanGhaste]

I do like how it's removed the side bar--makes it much easier to read on mobile phones.

[Wain]

Oooh, this is looking slick so far.

One thing I'll comment on, the greyed-out signature images are throwing me off a bit, they feel like big clickable links with how they highlight with an outline and it's a bit distracting while scrolling through a thread and unintentionally hovering over them. Other than that though everything's looking really nice, and I'm excited to see what other themes we can find for this layout.

I noticed that too. It's weird :/ I'm looking into it.

It's this Subsilver theme I installed. It was setting the signature to an opacity of 0.6 and I don't know why. I've modified it to not do so.

Unfortunately this theme is no longer one of the defaults (only Prosilver is) and is made by someone else to mimic the original. If it wasn't for the sake of keeping the board looking similar to how it was I'd remove it. The author credit at the bottom had a link to a Russian online store in it (I deleted that too!), and that made me a bit worried, even though this theme is published on the phpBB site and seems to be highly regarded.

What do you think? Make this theme the default, or move to the blue, default "Prosilver" theme? (You'll have to switch it in your user control panel to compare).

[Vephriel]

This one does have a nice touch of familiarity - sort of like the character model revamps of WoD. It's recognizable, but with a shiny new coat of paint. I like it and think it works nicely as the default, but if there's too many oddities I'm sure it would be fine to try the other one.

(also with the signature thing fixed I have no real issues currently!)

[Ana]

This one does have a nice touch of familiarity - sort of like the character model revamps of WoD. It's recognizable, but with a shiny new coat of paint. I like it and think it works nicely as the default, but if there's too many oddities I'm sure it would be fine to try the other one.

(also with the signature thing fixed I have no real issues currently!)

I agree with this

[Wain]

I also just added a "Prosilver SE" theme that is greyer than the default Prosilver and is rather nice. I haven't got the forum icon working with it yet. I added the Petopia logo and it works very nicely

This theme is by the same person that worked on the old Subsilver, I think.

[Wain]

Thanks for your comments and feedback so far I'm going to lock this post so we can centralize all feedback. Please post on this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=26016&p=610828#p610828

Thanks!