New Style Update

[Justin]

After asking users for their advice on a prospective new style for Freedom2Support and a response telling us that the majority of users would like to see it alongside a new site we have come to the decision to comission this style for the next chapter of Freedom2Support.

However as we also recieved feedback from a a small yet important section of our userbase, we will also ensure that the current style along with a version of the new style with a green background instead of white are able to be used both for the main site and the forums.

The new style with white background will be the default and upon launch all users will be switched to such style but can change back from the new skin switch option in the bottom left hand corner of each page. The new site will be designed primarily for the new style and for the best user experience we recommend using this but we will ensure it will work as well as possible with the original style.

A number of users said one of their biggest annoyances with the new style was it was hard to tell what was a link and what was not, this has been addressed by adding underlines and hover colors to all links in front page news posts, the main website page bodys and forum thread bodys, so it should now be easier to locate these links.

The only downside on the fact we will be giving users the choice of such styles is that as a consequence the time before the new style is finished along with the new site running on all styles will be somewhat increased. As it stands at the moment we are finshing tweaking the front page and the forums under the new skin and hope to start work on the main site next week with work to be completed Early December at the latest if all goes according to plan.

Below you can see the new link style used, both in green, and white.

[NewsreadeR]

Nice choice of skin Justin, we use the purple version

[Justin]

Farmergiles - We're still changing it a little bit, new logo, slightly different colours etc, I didn't like the default too much and purple isn't really us.

But in ways it's similar to our current skin so it's ideal for us, as whilst it's fresh, it also isn't too different.

[NewsreadeR]

Yep - ure right. its a nice skin and will go right with this site - cant wait to see the new logo

The only thing I would say to help you, is watch out re the cookie settings, we had a huge problem with people been logged out etc, with the vbadvanced portal. Rachel can tell you more, as she suffered from it.

[akita_inu]

Originally Posted by Farmergiles

Yep - ure right. its a nice skin and will go right with this site - cant wait to see the new logo

The only thing I would say to help you, is watch out re the cookie settings, we had a huge problem with people been logged out etc, with the vbadvanced portal. Rachel can tell you more, as she suffered from it.

True .... got logged out after short periods of inactivity - was really frustrating ....

[NewsreadeR]

It was only using the vbulletin skin though, it was to do with the vbadvanced login on the home page and also the login at the top of the forums.

[Justin]

FYI: Plans are on hold at the moment, hopefully not for too long but we'll see, in the meantime we're updating and correcting a lot of the things that are not so up to date on the current site, all of which should be sorted by Monday!

[NewsreadeR]

Just to give you a heads up

Upgrading to vb 3.6.3 with element and all templates was a doddle with no template reverts etc - less than 5 mins to do

[aos101]

Thanks NewsreadeR. Upgrading to 3.6.4 was pretty easy just now with no updated templates on our current style.

[NewsreadeR]

lol Adam - i posted that on the other side to let u know on 3.6.4 and came here to tell you and you had already done it

[Justin]

As I recieved a mail about this, the latest is that this is still on hold. We are currentley refreshing content on the main site, and all FAQ's should now be correct as should Tutorials.

We hope to further work on a new design for Freedom2Support in the first quarter of 2007.