Take a look at our tiny sports board, newly on XF!

[Max Taxable]

Took the big bite and migrated it away from vB 4 directly to XF 2.1 RC1 as soon as RC1 was released. Membership is very pleased. Everything smooth so far. Happy we made the move. Two styles, a blue one and a white one. Only official team colors were used throughout. Take a look and comment:

https//www.dallascowboysuniverse.com

 

[frm]

I like the white design better while being mobile as I prefer to turn down my screen brightness to conserve battery. With the brightness down, it's difficult to read on the dark blue style. White, on the other hand is easy on the eyes while mobile.

I'd suggest you seeing how many use the forum while mobile vs. desktop and consider switching to the white as the default if mobile usage is higher as many employ battery saving settings. And, of course, allow easy change or documentation on how to.

A few design tweaks, to include possible phrase changes to meet your niche (e.g. Media, in the gallery, to Football Media or another, stronger, keyword) and it's very fitting.

 

[Neal]

I'll correct the url for you - https://www.dallascowboysuniverse.com/



The background does not do my migraine any good

 

[Lee]

Took the big bite and migrated it away from vB 4 directly to XF 2.1 RC1 as soon as RC1 was released. Membership is very pleased. Everything smooth so far. Happy we made the move. Two styles, a blue one and a white one. Only official team colors were used throughout. Take a look and comment:

https//www.dallascowboysuniverse.com

Yes, the background image is not excellent - i'd look at changing that. The white theme is also much more pleasing to the eye!

 

[shimspedy]

well this forum looks awesome everything match

 

[Max Taxable]

consider switching to the white as the default

The white theme is also much more pleasing to the eye!

I took the advice and made the white theme the site default. Over the history of the site since I first introduced a blue theme back in 2014, it became the default because my stats showed it was by far the most used style of my users whether they were mobile or desktop. But, first impressions are important so the blue style will be a nice option for discovery for new members who happen to like dark styles.

Thanks all, for the reviews.

 

[Dalton Prock]

Very nice! Good luck to you and you forum!

 

[interforo]

Nice one! I would recommend changing the background

 

[RobinHood]

Looks good! Not sure about the textured background either, at the very least remove it from the navigation and put solid colours there. It's hard to read.

 

[Nicolas FR]

Not sure about the textured background either

for sure...

 

[Kim]

As previous posters have said, that textured background is not pleasant at all, makes the site hard to look at and navigate.

 

[John D.]

I like how it's a simple uncluttered clean design compared to what I normally see. Is that a third party or custom theme or skin, or is that something you can set with standard options right out of the box?

 

[tajhay]

Good to see another sports forum on xenforo.

Agree about the textured background. It's ugly and it makes things hard to read. Good luck to you.

 

[l3ta]

The background is the team's jersey fabric lol. It is original and IMO looks good. Maybe just change the nav background so the links are not lost

 

[John D.]

Do either of you two new commenters know the answer to what I asked here?

 

[RobinHood]

Do either of you two new commenters know the answer to what I asked here?

It looks stock, but styled with the built in styling options as opposed to using a 3rd party theme. That look should be achievable using the built in styling features and some creativity.

 

[Max Taxable]

I like how it's a simple uncluttered clean design compared to what I normally see. Is that a third party or custom theme or skin, or is that something you can set with standard options right out of the box?

Sorry for the late reply... Been kind of busy.

Everything you see except the logo and bg images is native xenforo. All I did was use strictly and only official team colors and plugged those into the color palette after creating a new style with no parent. The system itself then defaults the rest of the color assignments for everything, every element. Then it was just looking at everything and making a few changes here and there overriding some of the choices the system made. Fontawesome node icons were chosen and added to the extra.less template for each style. The bg images are identified in the various style vars where allowed natively.

And that's it. Did it all again to make the white style, but putting the colors in a different order in the palette.

Wound up with two styles light and dark, which both closely resemble those we had on the vb version.

 

[Max Taxable]

The background is the team's jersey fabric lol.

Correct!

 

[Mr Lucky]

The background is the team's jersey fabric lol.

It looks like a brick wall, I was wondering what it was meant to signify. Would be way better without it.

 

[Max Taxable]

It looks like a brick wall, I was wondering what it was meant to signify. Would be way better without it.

It kind of surprises me it bothers anyone, especially on mobile where it is minimized greatly. I'm going to continue to study other options. Our members love it though. And as said earlier, it adds originality. Main goal of the styling was accomplished, which was to make it different than all the other DC boards out there. Instead of "here I am, look just like you, we're all just cookie cutter." But that still can be done perhaps another way, maybe with a better bg image choice. Still evolving...