BBTONUKE extra

Worker Joined: Sep 28, 2006 Posts: 241

Friends i am in need of your input. What do you like in a theme. What do you prefer ligh tor dark themes. Tell me what you want and need in a theme.

Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 6434

Modern. Web 2.0. Think start-ups. Stylesheets and fonts (vs. lots of graphics that take up the majority of a tablet's relatively small screen). If you look the themes I've collected over the last 10 years (http://themes.fornuke.com), you'll notice there aren't too many that could be used for a business or organization - and plenty of...let's say, "loud" themes many probably wouldn't want to use in 2012.

Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2012 9:11 am

I agree with Kguske wholeheartedly.

Regarding your question of "light vs. dark", unfortunately that is personal preference, which means you cannot please all of your site "consumers". My take on it comes from my Human Factors training way back in College. We grow up reading books that are black text upon a white background - i.e., light background with dark text. For a site with a lot of textual reading, this is probably best from a Human Factors point of view, but that is just the textbook answer. Smile

Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2012 7:31 pm

Montego and kguske thank you for your input. Montego i noticed you like Lighter colored themes. Do you use any particular forum mods at your site ?

Kguske, do you use any mods in your forums that do not default in RN ?

I only ask as i was thinking about offering an expansion pack for Ravennuke that would be between a mild forum modification list up to OMG what do i do with all of these.

Do you think something like that might be useful. Of course i would offer the xtra needed files and images for all default RN themes and do others upon request. I just want to be an active part of this great community and know in a small way i make a difference.

I want to start a poll here as to what are the most wanted forum features that are not already included in RN and make it clear that the support would be my responsibility and not fall on your laps as you have enough to do already.

Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2012 10:01 pm

There are many and complex answers to these questions, I'm afraid. First, there is a debate about phpBB 2, 3, something different or nothing at all. If you're OK with phpBB 2 (and many are)...

There are questions about whether or not forum mods are useful for everyone. Some have multiple features which usually, but not always, are not configurable. One mod I am testing is the ABBC mod from Spasticdonkey. It has great features, but configuring it requires code changes. Installing it means theme changes. These requirements make it difficult to include in the default RN installation, which has the goal of minimizing code changes.

Some require graphics changes / additions (images) and some do not. Most require theme changes. Which leads me to suggest that your approach of identifying and supporting popular forums changes might be a good approach for those who use forums and want those additional functions / features.

My own Mouse Hover Topic Boxover forums mod, which I haven't installed on the site since upgrading to RN, doesn't require new graphics or theme changes. But it does require code changes. And, having forum mods makes upgrading more difficult as the mods have to be reapplied.

As for specific mods I think are most useful for my sites, off the top of my head (i.e. without doing any research):
- ABBC mod (with certain features disabled and some addons enabled)
- Watch This Forum
- Resize image
- (on this site) Signature Once
- (on this site) Hide Links (from non-members)
- (on this site) Add poster's username to quick reply when clicking the name

Some people might not want to hide links from search engines / non-members. Some might want to display the signature every time.

Some people might want to integrate AdSense or Nuke advertisements into the forums, and there are several ways / mods to do that.

Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2012 4:27 am

My opinion is to have no forums with themes so we can use the template forum RN included and from there make all the mods required. Otherwise it will be useless and hard to update in the future.

Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2012 3:17 pm

I have to echo kguske' sentiments. You will get different answers from different people and you'll also get different answers depending on a websites userbase. Doing market research first will save you a lot of potentially wasted time and effort on MODs that might only have a handful of potential users.

Personally, I would definitely use something that hid links in forums posts, forum signatures and forum profiles from non registered users as this could reduce the likelihood of potential spam and from an SEO perspective, helps reduce the loss of link juice.
I already have some social media code changes on my sites forums but I think having the ability to post specific form posts (not just the master link to the whole thread) to some social website like facebook might be useful for some as well.

Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2012 3:44 pm

I came up with this while you were out of town, but I have something to hide signatures and website links if < 5 posts by the user. [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 12:46 pm

Guardian2003 wrote:

....I think having the ability to post specific form posts (not just the master link to the whole thread) to some social website like facebook might be useful for some as well.

I think I have a potential solution, which is still in the works, that is pretty easy to implement. It could also be used sitewide, as an easy way to create a "sharing widget".

The solution is mostly JavaScript based, with minimal html markup required to launch the widget.

<a class="sharer" rel="post101" href="ftopicp-101-sticky-scroll-block-for-ravennuke.html#101">
<img title="Share This Post" alt="Share This Post" src="icon_share.png" />
</a>

Where class sharer is used to trigger a colorbox modal onclick, the href attribute is the url to be shared (it is converted to an absolute url within JavaScript, to avoid ShortLink issues), and the rel attribute is the CSS ID of a content preview. Put it all together with some jQuery plugins and custom colorbox scripting, and you have something like so.

While a content preview isn't required, the colorbox modal does need to be somewhat large to accommodate some of the facebook interactions. It seemed to me to be a good choice to fill the available space. Note that the preview is loaded via AJAX from the target page (the page to be shared) which is not necessarily the page being viewed. Kinda nifty Smile

Also has some basic callback functionality thanking the user to plussing or liking. Haven't been able to get the twitter callbacks working as of yet, but in the grand scheme of things it's not too important if I don't.

If there is no preview content it will probably default to a statement about "Spread the Word" with some wording thanking the user for promoting, etc.

I like this approach as the social counters are cool, but I don't really want to load 60 of them on a page. Since the social counters aren't loaded until the colorbox fires, it keeps your interactions with these external sites to a minimum; while still offering the same functionality.

In terms of forum installation, it will only require a couple minor edits to your viewtopic_body.tpl and a few minor edits to the provided JavaScript files; such as inserting your twitter username (if you have one), inserting your $nukeurl (which is hard coded in the JavaScript), and a couple other settings. A facebook app id may or may not be required, I have not had time to test without one yet. Wink

Sites with dark color themes will have a little extra work declaring some styling for the colorbox previews, and users of bbcodebox and codehighlighting might have some have some extra tweaks, but aside from that, as far as mods go, this one should be easy. Smile

Currently intended for XHTML, but could easily be adapted for HTML5 by using data-rel in place of rel.

Not sure how I got off on this, but hopefully shouldn't take too long to complete. If you have any comments, questions, or ideas, now's the time Smile

Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 1:06 pm

Definitely overkill (in a nice way) from what I had in mind, which was basically ensuring each post had a globally (within the forums) id that could be referenced so specific posts could be linked to for "sharing".
I would definitely use something like that and I'm quite excited to see where you go with it. The one thing I do have concerns about is the possible requirement of needing an FB App ID - not having a phone, I could never obtain one BUT if I absolutely needed to, I could find a way Smile

Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 3:00 pm

to make a long story short, the facebook like plugin I'm using comes with a default app id I didn't know about until after using it for months..lol. So the app id may only be required for tracking purposes, or some of the plugin features I'm not using. If it is required it's access does not seem to be restricted by using the default api key, although I haven't tried it since I filled mine in months ago.

In your situation I might claim ignorance, and try out with the default settings Smile

I really like the social plugins I'm using (MIT and GPL) as they are much easier than using the native code from the individual services, and were fairly easy to integrate with the event hooks within colorbox. The same would not be true of standard code provided by fb,twitter, etc.

However there is zero documentation, aside from a single example for each. It looks like they have a paid service for social media optimization, so I understand why. If you are curious in the interim, the plugins I'm using are [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ] [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ] [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

If you can get fbjlike-js to function on your site (with default api key defined in the script), then it should work as used in this mod.

In terms of how a user will actually launch this within the forums, I'll be modifying the "minipost" icon/link that appears before "POSTED" in most themes. The URL should be correct as-is, and thanks to nukeDH it will pull the meta info for that individual post; when the "preview" is generated on FB, Google+, and Twitter. As far as UI and losing the original "minipost" link, I don't think I've ever clicked one prior to doing this Smile

This doesn't affect the minipost used within Forums search, in case anyone was wondering.

While it's still under construction, and hasn't been through the "does it work on IE" challenge yet, you can try it out in it's current state, on my site by clicking the icon next to one of the posts. It will eventually be a "share" icon but atm, it's still using the original "minipost" image. If you try that particular post you will see I managed to get highlighting working and restyled, and at current trying to adapt the scripting to different scenarios; as some sites are highlighting, others are not, etc.. [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

The facebook button can be temperamental if loading the modal more than once per page load. It may be fixed, or may be a limitation of the script or fb api.

Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 5:12 pm

Very nice spastic, I also use the signature mod and it is a very nice addition.

Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2012 8:55 pm

@spastic - very nice!
Yes, I think the minipost icon (in the example link) needs changing, it doesn't indicate that it is clickable in it's current form (need to check it's working on my site). I'll definitely be checking out those plug-ins and have my fingers crossed they are not too big in combined file size to be loaded on a mobile device.

Love the theme by the way and I'll be copying the footer icons idea Smile

Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2012 9:41 am

whew, went thru trying about 20 different approaches to get the facebook button to load more than once in a row. Thought there was the possibility of some type of facebook limitation, but went thru trying every colorbox work-around available.

Turns out it was facebook, as the script goes through the DOM to get the like buttons, and if you've added these buttons after the fact, you have to tell it to look again. Turned out to be
FB.XFBML.parse();
That was needed, and fortunately it was available indirectly via the fblike plugin. I'll probably break down what I did to get this colorbox script working on my site after I'm done, as I've learned some things in my journey and think others could benefit as well. But don't go looking at my code yet as it's messy and not in it's final state, due to all the tinkering. Rolling Eyes

As far as the size of the scripts themselves, they are unminified at current and are about 3-4kb each (3 of them). Minified and combined they could probably be around 2-3kb. I have know idea of the size of any scripts which are loaded by the plugins though.

Still work to do obviously, but hope to get this wrapped up this weekend with an appropriate icon, and other tweaks. Seems to mostly work in IE9, but a little slower to load buttons than other browsers; with some irregularity loading the twitter button. Guess I still have some research to do... Don't currently have access to IE<9

Glad you like the footer icons Smile

If it were doing it today I might consider using an icon font, but only so many hours in the day..