Design critique + help please.

[Slavik]

Right,

Looking at moving the paintballer forums over to xenforo. The problem is, I cant seem to get the basic color scheme down, I don't know if it is just me, but the dark blues that are signature for the site clash way too much with the white and make the site look too bright.

http://xen.p8ntballer-forums.com/index.php

login: xen
password: p8ntxentest

The normal site

http://www.p8ntballer-forums.com/vb/forum.php

When we do go for the big switchover I am looking to keep the designs familiar, but cleaned up. We are working on iTrader for XF and once that is in place I imagine the switchover will be quick to follow.

The problem is if I darken the white to a very light blue or a very light grey it jus tlooks wrong all over. Any suggestions or critiques are appreciated for what has been done so far.

Still have some work to do on the header, and add the banners back in, but just trying to get a feel for the main forum views.

Cheers

 

[Paul B]

As this is not a resource, I've moved the thread to Off Topic.

 

[Slavik]

Cheers!

 

[Floris]

Excellent logo btw, looks great on xenforo

The categories look old fashioned because they're bit low (less height) than I might prefer, making them have a bit more padding around the text top/bottom in firebug made it look more 'fresh' so to speak.

I like the blue I think you've made an amazing start.

 

[Robert F Schmitz]

My opinion, I would narrow up the width a bit to see more of the background contrasting the darker blue, then again, not sure how much your banners will take up. Great logo.

 

[Slavik]

Excellent logo btw, looks great on xenforo

The categories look old fashioned because they're bit low (less height) than I might prefer, making them have a bit more padding around the text top/bottom in firebug made it look more 'fresh' so to speak.

I like the blue I think you've made an amazing start.

Cheers, can you post a shot of what you changed if you dont mind?

My opinion, I would narrow up the width a bit to see more of the background contrasting the darker blue, then again, not sure how much your banners will take up. Great logo.

Thanks, will have a play with those ideas.

 

[Lee]

I agree...your logo is very good. The blue is also a very nice shade, i would add some contrast to the white forum backgrounds!

 

[Jeffin]

I love the logo too!

 

[bogus]

You could change the forum nodes color with the one you are using at vb (forumrow table)
I also would prefer the logo from your vb side. Also the sidebar looks a bit... Why not using the top border from the vb sidebar?
The look, at all, in xF is more fresh. The vb Forum style looks too "crowded"
A view changes here and there and this is awesome.
btw. i love paintball.

 

[Slavik]

Added some changes in, waiting on Lawrence to update his AMS addon before adding the ads back in opposed to editing the templates myself. So adverts still need to go in.

Have tried to sharpen things up a lot, removing the radius options to boxes. The only thing left to do is change the text in the navbar form blue to white.

Otherwise im mostly happy with that, so I can wait for my coder to finish making itrader for xenforo and look at handling CMS (most likely via wordpress).

Any further critisisms and comments are appreciated.