The change, the new style

[John Headstrong]

OK, so everyone has noticed the change, I will try to explain why the change was needed. (sorry if it is a bit long and techie at some points)

The forum uses software called phpbb3, this software gets updated quite regularly it fixes bugs and also adds new features. The main problem is the old theme the forum used, it was a custom theme based on the older style subsilver2 that was based on the old phpbb2 style and that is where a few problems start.

The history of the "look" of the forum is that Andy downloaded and installed a theme back in 2004, and that is where the forum icons and most of the colours come from. Then I came along years later, made changes to the theme to allow the use of some new features (to get the anti-spam working for one! the forum used to be flooded daily, the mods would spent hours dealing with it) and eventually made the transition from phpbb2 to phpbb3, I had to make the style look as much like the old version as possible (that is what Andy asked for) and make a few more icons to use the new features of phpbb3. Version 3 of phpbb comes with 2 styles one called subsilver2 that was made to look like the old phpbb2 version and the new "prosilver". I had to base Ish on subsilver2 because the changes would have been far to extreme for users to handle.

At the time basing it on subsilver2 was a best option because prosilver was so new there was not much advice on how to change things, so many sitegeeks done exactly what I did and based their work on subsilver2 because it was "familiar" and was the easier option. This still caused major issues when it was implemented, the user avatar sizes trashing the look of the forum for example, something that a change of the rules concerning avatars and a long thread from M3 and myself over the course of a few weeks eventually sorted. The issue is subsilver2 is not supported in the same way that prosilver is.

The older style was basically broken and was stopping us using some of the new features that 3.0.6/3.0.7 and future versions will bring, fixing it every time there is a upgrade is not really viable, that is what I have been doing and it is not fun.

So this new style works, has the Ish colurs and icons and is based on prosilver enough that it will take the prosilver updates when the forum is upgraded. (less work for me) many of the mods have been using it for the past few months, and it has been there just in case stuff breaks.

I upgraded the forum to 3.0.7 the other day, everything appeared to work at first, then I discovered that while registering the captcha (the random letters to prove you are human) did not work, which meant new users could not register. Rather than spend a few hours patching the old broken style I decided it was time to make the switch.

This new style also bring a few new features that just did not work on the old style, watch out for the "quick reply" feature that will be on some forums soon, other bonuses include "search" in the header works and users can change text size themselves

and for totally non techie terms, Ish is allotment, when I got it I tried to use the old beds and layout the previous allotment keeper used, while this worked for us for a while the beds had problems with bad weeds, buried rocks and junk, we needed to strip it all back, dig it all over and start again.


some will love it, some may hate it, it is still Ish

[Green Aura]

Thanks John. Moderately clearer than mud (I'm sure others will understand much better than me).

I think I get your drift - I've just had to get rid of Office 2007 (freebie on my new laptop - for a while anyway) and hate the new version of open office for, I think, similar reasons. While they do lots of whizzbang new things, they don't seem to do any of the old things I require of them. But I'm going to have to get used to it (open office that is).

And as I said on another thread, I've been using the new layout for a while now and have had no particular problems with it.

[Millymollymandy]

Thanks for doing a better explanation than me and I can't believe that I actually understood all of that techie stuff!