SDA Gfx[ Follow up, from other topic]

Sæ wrote:

There is a side for every coin. There are pros, and there are cons. This just so happens to be a con. Also, I'm asking for 50/50. I'm not asking for ALL of the banners to be removed, just all of them besides the ones in the academy handbook. Either way, you make a point.

Getting rid of the banners, is idiotic and generally puts people of academies. Example GDA has recently decided to ditch everything bar the main, and 4 banners. Despite making their new 4 banners [Very rushed]. The entire site feels unfinished, and I find myself not logging on anymore at all.

Now Sae you want, to remove banners because you feel it causes, lag. Now simply solution change the main banners lines.


Announcement
Members Guide
Ban Appeals.

Classrooms - Classroom stuff
Dorms - All Dorms
Examination Halls - Testing Requests + Results
Introductions & Farewells
Creative Studios - Events, Writing and GFX sharing
Suggestions
Off Topic - Pokémon, Hearthstone, Anime

Arena - All the Area Stuff
Roleplay - Roleplay stuff
War - War stuff.
Tournaments

This will Lower the current 29 forums with banners, on home to 14 without getting rid of anything. Would mean we add a few little things to the Menu top right, but that takes 5 seconds.
New banners required : Creative Studio, Dorm Main, Examination Hall, War.  

Now this is using a Forums within Forum metord so would require a changing in forum style in panel.

Doing this, along with resizing to 100x300. Should be fine for you sae.

To be honest, running a forum without banners is not idiotic. Forums can run without graphics, and academies should be no exception (A perfect example of this is DA). I only said keep the ones for the handbook because that along with the main banner hook the users into the academy. Hell, the fact that we have 2 different work on the acad right now (a combo of Ruby, Gaj, and maybe even Zthriller), make the site look bad.

Here is another thing: Either you have a professional design graphics, or you don't have graphics at all. Because bad graphics can do more harm then good. I am NOT saying that our current graphics is bad, but with 3 separate designers on the forum, it looks bad right now as is.

Also I like your idea of combing forums, and I even know something that could help when it comes to that. This thread shouldn't just be about graphics but rather forum appearance as a whole.

You can't compare this academy to Duel Academy because they don't use the standard Formulation setup. What they have doesn't just require paying Formulation to allow them to get 100% control of the website, but also professional coders/Designers who know exactly what they are doing.

I don't have enough code knowledge, to redesign an entire template.

Not saying Sda doesn't need maybe a fresh new look. But i am strongly against the Lack of banners idea.

JessWolfa wrote:

You can't compare this academy to Duel Academy because they don't use the standard Formulation setup. What they have doesn't just require paying Formulation to allow them to get 100% control of the website, but also professional coders/Designers who know exactly what they are doing.

Actually I can...You see, they do use the standard forumation set up, they just redesigned it with a new skin. And this isn't about this skin, this is about running a forum without graphics on the banners. If I were to compare skins, then yeah, I can't compare SDA to DA, but I can compare them in this situation because DA has proved that they can run their academy and not have graphics for their banners.

Also, I don't know what the fuck your talking about, forumotion is all free unless you don't want adds and you want to remove some copyrights and stuff. If you can point out what they are doing that any other forum cannot do, then please do so, I'm interested.

JessWolfa wrote:

I don't have enough code knowledge, to redesign an entire template.

But if we wanted to, we have Mokie (even though she does a lot as is right now). Hell, Project X whatever Gaj calls it might be a redesign of the template, who knows.

my reply:

Anyway,

JessWolfa wrote:

Kind of hard to show you, without a Founder account.

Though its clear when you know what your looking for, that they pay very slightly for things. They have not just taken a new skin. They have edited the template allot. Which normally skins lock you out, and you are un able to edit the overall template like that.  Some skins even go as far as blocking out the ability to change your background. Well not edit the background image.   Was more obvious in their old design than this one.

Now it could be, that someone actually owns the outright softwhere and built the skin from scratch and spent all that time, and simply plugged it in themselves.

*I might be wrong*  properly am, it has been awhile since I fiddled with the back coding on, them skins that don't use the Css or Jarascript to do their stuff.

Yeah, ya are. I have excess to GDA's founder account for template editing reasons. Editing templates does not cost money, its just you have to have the knowledge of how to code and know not to fuck up.

Btw, not on about the standard stuff. You do in the Css, or Html Jarascript.

@Gajeel Redfox: Here is some things you can edit with the templates to make the acad look slightly better btw.
http://fmdesign.forumotion.com/t18-phpbb2-removal-of-author-message-header-in-the-topics
http://fmdesign.forumotion.com/t31-phpbb2-removal-of-last-visit-unanswered-posts-table
http://fmdesign.forumotion.com/t32-phpbb2-removal-of-top-posters-mark-forums-read-table

A forum looks too plain and empty without forum banners imo unless it has a decent looking theme/skin. At the same time a forum with poorly made banners looks unprofessional.

About the lag; I myself don't have much difficulty accessing SDA even though my net speed usually only ranges from around 30kbps lol. For the people who do have serious net lag, resizing or reducing the number of banners can help although it would look neater if all forums had banners in my opinion.

I think the way to go about it is to have an experienced gfx artist remake all of the banners. That said, does SDA have any active gfx artists?

From what I know, the ones that are active are Jess, Ruby, and Gaj. Ruby currently has her banners as the academy handbook, the current head banner, and the Introduction and Farewells banner. Gaj's banners are just about everything else, and I can show you some of Jess' work. For example these are the ones she did for GDA's Dorms:

Feelicks wrote:

A forum looks too plain and empty without forum banners imo unless it has a decent looking theme/skin. At the same time a forum with poorly made banners looks unprofessional.

About the lag; I myself don't have much difficulty accessing SDA even though my net speed usually only ranges from around 30kbps lol. For the people who do have serious net lag, resizing or reducing the number of banners can help although it would look neater if all forums had banners in my opinion.

I think the way to go about it is to have an experienced gfx artist remake all of the banners. That said, does SDA have any active gfx artists?

our best gfxer is feelicks no doubt, do you want a job m9-1

Also, a new, skin that was light instead of dark would be cool. Just sayin. Though if not, I understand why we can't have a new skin, the one we have right now is perfectly fine as is.

@Dazo, no. no lighter color, please god no! Keep it as is!

Lunarnox wrote:

@Dazo, no. no lighter color, please god no! Keep it as is!

Hay, ya know, some people prefer a lighter skin, some people prefer a darker skin. I'm just tired of seeing so many acads use dark skins. Its overrated and overdone, and someone should try to trend off of it.

I don't really count as active, i only really do batch jobs.

Well if no one is making new banners then I volunteer as tribute


That is, assuming them higher ups decide to not remove banners.

pls tell me we're getting feelicks to do it (see his work on neon's ava/sig)