I have been thinking about get a custom skin desingged for my forums if I opt to purchase vBulletin, and I was just wondering if anyone has seen some good examples of nicely designed vB skins so I can get some ideas - inspiration for how I want to get my skin to look like?
Custom skins can be very expensive... when I was looking I was getting quoted at about $1k for a custom skin. I suggest you pick up a template for $30 or use one of the many free ones. www.vbstyles.com has some nice templates.
Yeah I think I should be able to get one made up for around $250. Plus I hope to make this skin fairly generic so I can use it for my others forum as well - so it will sorta be like two for the price of one... Anyway so has anyone got some really nice vB sites that they think are well designed?
I've recently released a custom design at my forums, I'm not going to complain if you take a look at it Some other sites with custom skins are... www.gotskinned.com www.blind-fate.com www.vbulletinskinz.com Custom skins of that quality (design and coding) will be ~$250 - $750
It seems to me that so many vB designed skins have somewhat of an enterance page before ther forum or they at least have somewhat of a navigation bar alongside the forum. Can I ask what are some of the benefits of this? Just another chance to place advertising, or create an intro page to optimise for SE's or is it a better way of getting those new threads indexed by listing them on the homepage? What are the main reasons for it?
Most I would say are for completeness, intro pages, that is. My personal opinion is that a forum with a front page is more professional than one without...but don't just put one up for the heck of it, make sure it actually serves a purpose. Sidebars open doors for you...they let you add a lot of information to your forums without making the place confusing - and yes, that means more space for ads I highly recommend a sidebar if you can find room for it in your forums and if you can come up with enough stuff to put in there - sidebars that only take up 1/3 of the page from top to bottom are an eye sore to me
Well that would be the biggest issue - essentially when I make a forum - it is for the purposes of a forum not loads of other side things. I mean there are a few little bells and whistles (extra sections) I'd like to add but in my opinion it would be far from worthy of a sidebar through out the forum - maybe a side bar on the index page or enterance page...
Can I ask what are people's opinions on fluid or fix width - I'm unsure which I should opt for when getting my skin designed...
Yeah but sometimes I just think that it can ruin the design of a forum because if you design a forum with 1024x768 in mind but make it so that it works for 800x600 a forum can look reall clean and professional but it you get those really big resolutions everything just looks so distant, and it doesn't look right... I dunno, I just really wanted to get some feedback on the issue.
Fixed designs are typically easier to design for and are "safer" than fluid...but fluid designs are typically more popular. I would only recommend going with fluid if you can pull it off. You'll want to make sure it looks good in 800, 1024, and 1280. I'm kind of split between the two...I'm using a fixed design right now but that doesn't mean I prefer fixed over fluid...they both have their advantages and disadvantages.
Fixed: Advantages - This is the easier to design and modify of the two...you don't have to use stretcheable elements and you don't have to worry about stuff not "fitting" in certain resolutions. You know exactly what all of your visitors are seeing. Disadvantages - Can look bad on large resolutions, especially 1280+ ... Fluid: Advantages - Looks good on large resolutions and most other resolutions. This is considered to be the best overall for all browsers and resolutions. Disadvantages - Harder to design. You need to create stretcheable elements and you need to test in multiple resolutions. There is always the problem of which resolution to start designing in and how do you know that it will look good in another resolution during the designing process?