New look and feel (and how to get the old blue and silver look back)

[Serpent]

It feels like an old friend got replaced by a lizard person.

A jab at me and iguanamon?

I love we_universal. For those who don't, maybe there's a way to add the theme to url, when logged out?

[Wanderer81]

I was able to switch back to Pro-Silver with no problem. Thanks for leaving the option. Everyone has their own preferences, but for me Pro-Silver is easier to read than we_Universial. Basic User options without having to log-in would be the best.

[Evita]

I didn't follow the discussion about themes so I got a shock when I opened the forum just now, but it was in a super positive way. I love the new look! I like the colors, the fonts, the banner, the links at the top, it feels well thought out and polished. Thank you to everyone who made it happen!

[Voxel]

The banner needs to be a JPEG, 1170x240 pixels in size, under an open source or creative commons license.

OK but why did you set the forum width for prosilver theme if there is not banner for this theme?

[Montmorency]

I tend to browse the forum without logging in for a quick update on what's going on, but now with we_universal that's not very appealing anymore.

If you're using a personal machine, you can usually stay logged in by checking the "Remain logged in" box on the log in screen. This will allow you to keep your customizations in force at almost all times. If you can try this, does it help any?

It's not a big deal for me, but I find that in spite of checking this box, I still get logged out from time to time (on a machine that hasn't been rebooted or used by anyone else).

Are hieroglyphs really a good symbol for this language learning community?

Well, I don't know about the community, but they're a great symbol for emk!

Well, the original we_universal theme actually used a dramatic stock photo of an office building, which was really weird looking on a language forum!

The hieroglyphs are really just a placeholder. I needed something that was roughly the same dark color as the original office building photo, and which we could legally use and redistribute. Oh, and it needed to have something to do with language learning.

I've always wanted to have a more interesting banner, one which features more languages (especially ones with interesting scripts). We could, for example, ask native speakers to translate "Welcome!" into as many languages as possible, if that's not too corny. I like the idea of using text in interesting scripts, but I'm open to other suggestions.

The banner needs to be a JPEG, 1170x240 pixels in size, under an open source or creative commons license. It needs to be dark enough that the white text shows up legibly.

I think the hieroglyphs are a good choice. They have a sort of timeless feel, and are somewhat reminiscent of the old HTLAL logo (in my mind, anyway). If you had something with a lot of modern languages on, it might imply an unintended bias towards those languages (since you can't include everything). Having said that, I quite like the idea of exotic scripts. "Welcome" isn't such a bad idea. Also maybe pick out and distinguish the major language groups.

[iguanamon]

It feels like an old friend got replaced by a lizard person.

It's always the same thing from you mammals. We were here on this Earth long before you came on the scene, just remember that. On behalf of the RADL the "Reptilian Anti Defamation League", Lizard Division, I resemble that remark. Thanks, Serpent, for defending reptilian rights. We may be cold-blooded but reptiles are people too!

Seriously, thanks for all your hard work, emk.

[Serpent]

The banner needs to be a JPEG, 1170x240 pixels in size, under an open source or creative commons license.

OK but why did you set the forum width for prosilver theme if there is not banner for this theme?

we_universal requires the same dimensions Probably most other themes too.

Evita, glad you liked it!!! It's been available for a while. That's exactly why it was made default - many users never get around to trying out more themes

[Evita]

Evita, glad you liked it!!! It's been available for a while. That's exactly why it was made default - many users never get around to trying out more themes

Yeah, I would have switched sooner if I had known about it, but that's okay. The best thing about making it default is that more new users will join, I think. I was really reluctant to join this forum because there are tons of other phpBB boards on the internet and many use that default blue style, it seemed outdated and too common to me. Now everyone will realize that this is not just a quick backup site, that it has serious intentions.

One thing that seems strange though is that there are two links to the active topics at the top. Wouldn't one be enough?

[emk]

One thing that seems strange though is that there are two links to the active topics at the top. Wouldn't one be enough?

Ah, yeah, that's a fun little issue.

t123 wrote us an awesome "topics" plugin that added an "Active Subjects" link to phpBB. But we_universal has this link built in!

I want to edit t123's plugin to have links to the wiki and (soon) the blog, and I want to remove the duplicate links under we_universal. But I don't want to take away the "Active Subjects" link from people using prosilver, and so I'm going to have to write even more code to deal with that, and I don't know how yet. So it's going to take a while to sort some of this stuff out.

[Iversen]

The colour of the "universal" theme is almost like the one of a Komodo Dragon - but not all reptiles look like that. Most other reptiles of the planet have lots of different colours. There is even one purely blue anole, but it only lives on a small island named Gorgona and is threatened with extinction - as if the sombre dark grey of the universal wasn't enough to make one depressed... When I see the forum now I logon as fast as possible to get back to the airy blue colour scheme which is my absolute favorite among the possibilities. I hope it won't go the same way as the Gorgona anole.

Anole.jpg