One area I’m focusing on is the header section. I tried to innovate with my latest themes (Realize and Aardvark), and my goal now is to make them even better looking and more functional. The header is obviously unique to each theme, but here’s what put together for my client’s site.

Something that’s always bugged me about forum software are smiles on the post editor. They take up a huge amount of space and usually cheese-up the page considerably. So I put them in a cupboard! (easily opened and closed with a click)

All buttons (form, postbit etc) look the same. These kind of buttons not only look better, but have provide accessibility and are easier to translate.

And that’s all for now! NDesign and Realize will be available first, for those wondering.

Fun pie chart! I don't use tables..

I’ve always designed client sites to play nice with IE6, and tediously implemented “hacks” where necessary to make them look the way they should. The real problem here is that the browser is so old, and so riddled with bugs that I literally have to spend more time worrying about IE6 than any other browser. Its brutal.

So when does the madness end? I guess it ends when clients stop caring about supporting it; when no one uses it anymore..

• Painless adding and editing of content.
• Multiuser editing (students, teachers)
• Easy plugins for extended functionality
• Save draft content for review
• Great SEO
• Administration time cut in half

On top of the switch to WordPress, I also updated the theme of the site. Its a more minimalist and elegant. I also decided to bring the resolution back down 800px width. In a world with such disparity in resolution, its best practice just to keep as many people as happy as possible. In this case that meant supporting 800x600ers who were complaining about the change ever since I made it. I tried the experiment, my audience just isn’t ready for it yet.

So far I’m very happy with the move. We’ll see how it goes and wether or not its easy enough for technically challenged students and faculty to deal with.

As promised, I started work on Dark Intentions 1.4. Its coming along nicely. I need to add some buttons, iron a few areas and insert all the little niceties. We should see a release some time this week. I’m serious this time. I’m also happy to tell you that I intend to provide an enhanced version sometime down the line. It will be easier to customize, and may even integrate in to your K2/WordPress site. We’ll see how it goes.

If you have any suggestions for new themes that I’ll be working on after Dark Intentions, please email me or comment. Also, I’ve received a number of inquiries about custom themes. I do write custom themes at a reasonable price, please email me if you’d like a quote or sample of custom work I’ve done. Also look out for a new MyBB section coming to quacktacular.net soon with more information on free and custom themes.

Update: Sorry for the delay guys, I haven’t forgotten about you. I’m waiting for my aluminum iMac arrive so I can get this done (using my iMac G4 now, doesn’t really cut it for development).

The first issue is small problem with the new editor that I described on the MyBB Community Forums.

The width of the editor (when composing a PM at least) is a problem for people running fixed width themes. The width really should be editable in the template or with CSS. I don’t think this is possible right now, can we make this change?

As seen on my fixed width template, and on the MyBB Community Forums, the editor causes problems where pages are squished and elements overflow. 

This is just a suggestion, but it would save a lot of grief for people making themes for their own sites or distribution.

Some good discussion ensued, but it doesn’t look like anything will be done before 1.4 final. Now I, and other theme developers, are left find work arounds or introduce inconsistency into MyBB’s otherwise fantastic interface. I’m investigating methods like a javascript or plugin based patch, but these will likely delay the release of my two fixed width themes N.Design and Dark Intentions. Please hit me up in the comments if you have a suggestion for these problems.

Using the new ACP, and specifically the new Template/Theme system has been a treat. It provides a greater level of robustness and organization. I especially appreciate the new ‘Edit Style Sheet’ mode wherein you can jump right in and edit you theme’s full style sheet. I plan to write more about upcoming themes and MyBB 1.4 over the next few weeks, but i leave you now with a screenshot from N.Design 1.4.