A few thoughts.
Firstly, I'd advise that you find a theme you like and alter it. Designing a theme from scratch is hellishly hard. Even altering Rainy Day to the HoF took me over a week of fairly constant work.
Since I don't know any code at all, it's pretty useless for me to design anything
Secondly, I'd advise that we select a couple of people to design the theme and then LEAVE THEM ALONE!!!! The last thing we need is a theme designed by committee.
We could just have it so that anyone who wanted to design a theme could do it on their own - I doubt there are that many people who would want to do that. Depending on how many people do it, we could just have that many skins, plus a basic choice - Aeolus, Cobalt, and RainyDay. I sorta doubt we'll get more than three or four people designing a skin.
Thirdly. I agree with allowing a choice of styles here. This is not HoF. We are not trying to create an identity on the Web. We are simply a group of friends in a common room. However, simply for ease of administration, I recommend that we stick to a handful of themes, say 5 at the absolute outside.
I agree with this. Part of what makes a place homey is being able to decide what "look" is most comfortable for you. Also, administration wise... people choose their own skins, so the uploading the skin the original time would be the only time administration has to deal with it, right? I would say have 6 skins - three "normal" types, like what we use already, and three b77 specific types.
I do
not think that we should add any brand new skins until we are a permanent location. That gives more work for the admins to do. That way, people designing have at least a month to perfect their designs as well (and maybe I'll get a chance to learn how to do it
)
Finally, the background image can be done, but it needs careful work. The theme would have to be designed as a "fixed width" theme to avoid stretching. This can cause all sorts of problems at lower resolutions. My advice would be to stick to images in banners or forumheaders.
I wouldn't worry about it. #1, I don't know how to do a basic skin, let alone something that might be complicated. #2, I would still have to get the artist permission first - something I don't know if I would get. And #3, if it isn't something that people really really like, there's really no point in doing it.
I will of course give help as needed.
Careful there
You might be getting more emails than you can handle
[quote-"Alatar"](P.S. Much as it would suit me personally to use the Rainy Day theme as a template, having worked with it already, I suggest we avoid it in order to preserve a seperate identity to HoF)[/quote][/quote]
I agree completely.
May I also add, that anyone who is planning on creating a skin, start their own thread here in the business forum about it. That way, as you work on it, you can ask for thoughts and imput. Even if it isn't something done by committee, it is nice to hear peoples comments on your work. At least, it's nice for me
That way, I know that what I'm doing is something that people might actually like