And speaking of the design... off-topic, and I'm sorry to be so blunt, but I've been keeping quiet about it forever: why is the current design of this forum so terrible? It's simply counter-productive in every possible way. Many buttons are made invisible because they're in the same color as the background, and the comment layout actually makes it difficult to distinguish between quoted comments and new comments. It's a turnoff whenever I visit the forum these days, and honestly one of the reasons I don't do it much. Can we please get the old design from a few years ago back? Or at least something that works better than this?

To be completely honest, and you're probably not going to like this answer, but the message boards is way down on my list of concerns as far as this whole mess goes. As I think Toadette mentioned once, we're kind of in the boondocks as far as the animation community goes. We only have about 10 to 12 people who post here on a regular basis and the number of active threads I can pretty much count on one hand. And with the extremely limited amount of time I currently have to work on the site, I would rather devote most of it to the database itself, which was really the main thrust of this whole thing anyway.

I do get that. But I'm wondering if the current design of the forum may to an extent have some connection with so few people posting regularly these days.

I do get that. But I'm wondering if the current design of the forum may to an extent have some connection with so few people posting regularly these days.

I hope not. If we can't get them by the quality of the information we provide, I don't think the style isn't going to make any difference.

I did make a few changes. Let me know how it looks for you now. You may have to hit CTRL-F5 to see any changes, but the dropdown menus can be read better now and the quoted posts are more readily apparent.

I do get that. But I'm wondering if the current design of the forum may to an extent have some connection with so few people posting regularly these days.

I hope not. If we can't get them by the quality of the information we provide, I don't think the style isn't going to make any difference.

I have to disagree. I think everything is part of the complete package that a website or forum offers: the information, the members, the discussions, the look and design. When a forum looks as visually cluttered and un-user-friendly as this one has for the past few years, I can easily picture some people choosing to take their cartoon discussion elsewhere. I know competition from social media sites is hard, but that should be an incentive to make this site as visually attractive and user-friendly as possible.

I did make a few changes. Let me know how it looks for you now. You may have to hit CTRL-F5 to see any changes, but the dropdown menus can be read better now and the quoted posts are more readily apparent.

I pressed CTRL-F5 now and... hey, that DOES look better! It's already a vast improvement from earlier. Well done!

One thing that occurs to me right off the bat... could it be possible to make the "Originally posted by" text parts in quoted comments more visible, i.e. not in such a light grey color? I think the whole layout will 'scan' quicker if they are as instantly readable and big as the text underneath.



Also: This is a bigger thing, but I've been thinking ever since the redesign that the main forum pages look very cluttered, most of all because the headlines are so dang HUGE. The old site layout had a more natural text size for the headlines (i.e. not so overwhelming), and gave a much quicker visual overview of all the topics and categories. Could it be an idea to make all the headlines somewhat smaller?

Thanks, Patrick, for the improvements. One thing I had noticed previously and was going to mention is that a few boards (such as "Cartoon Discussion of Whenever We Feel Like It") inexplicably default to a different theme (now selectable as "yaf") from the rest of the forums (and this theme at least already had legible outlines around quotes... but there's certainly no mistaking a quote block from the rest of a post now regardless of theme). It would be tidier if those forums were configured to default to the same theme ("cerulean") as the rest. Note that if you as a logged-in user have tried out the new theme setting, you won't see this theme difference unless you log out, as your theme selection will apply to those forums too.

While we're at it, it would also be ideal if the TTTP and Thunderbean forums could be configured to use the standard new-posts/no-new-posts icons like the other forums instead of the inexplicable question mark image.

Getting back to remaining non-cosmetic issues since the forum was restored, in addition to the "Thank" button not working, I thought I'd elaborate on the notification menu also not working properly as was mentioned earlier in the thread: clicking it without new notifications now takes you directly to the "Notifications" page without popping up anything, while in the case of a new notification it displays a menu saying "Not Found". Also, HTTP connections are now being accepted again instead of redirecting to HTTPS; typically something I'd appreciate, but I recall you mentioning that HTTPS was important security-wise due to the way the site works.

Clicking on the "thank" button doesn't appear to have any effect.

The "Thank" function should be working now.

Clicking on the "thank" button doesn't appear to have any effect.

The "Thank" function should be working now.

Nice... it does. :)

By the way, would it be possible to change the links in comments to actually get the 'open in new tab' (etc) options when right-clicking them, rather than the redundant "reply with quote" (etc) options?

Another thing that might be worth looking into: some more nearly invisible buttons when you press the notification bell.