A few small changes.

[Hawk]

Looking forward to see what you come up with.

[Gumboots]

First thing I want is the login form at the top of the page, so I don't have to go looking for it. That'll save some time, and apparently is easy to do.

I probably shouldn't get too gung ho at the moment though. Best to take it easy and let ideas percolate. I'm also thinking it's time I made some more stuff for the game. Finish that map off, and sort out some more locos.

I am running some basic tweaks to Prosilver_SE over at phpBB. It's rather nice if you give it a few small adjustments. The CSS overrides are running in Stylish, with the banner called in from desktop. That banner wouldn't suit this site. I just thought it was a nice relaxing look while I was using that forum.

Prosilver_SE_tweaks.jpg

ETA: I've just whipped up a trial banner for WE Universal. Not that I think that particular style is going to be best (I'll roll my own), but I do think something along these lines for a banner could work well. Take a look and see what you think.

Which reminds me: do you have a PSD or something of your old H&B circular logo? The current gif is a bit rough around the edges.

[Hawk]

I like that wooden bridge in the WE header.

All I have is psp files, which probably doesn't do you any good, but I did convert a plain logo psp to a png if that helps any.

H&B_Logo2.png

Here's another one without the text.

H&B_Logo.png

I did the circular text from this tutorial - https://msts.steam4me.net/tutorials/write_circle.html - but that also probably doesn't help since it uses PSP 7.

I also have the hawk and the badger as separate png files, if you were so inclined to start from scratch.

[Gumboots]

Lol. That second one looks like "giant hawk wants baby badger for dinner". Which I assume is why you changed it. You probably got told off.

I might as well grab the critters too, if you have them. I can do circular text in PS. I expect PSP uses the same general principles (set circular path and stroke path with text).

[Hawk]

Here's what I have. Hope it helps.

[Gumboots]

Another change. Got rid of the WE_Universal style, as nobody was using it anyway. Nobody seems to be using Prosilver Special Edition either, so that might end up going too.

I'll still play around with a new custom style for the site, but none of the available styles are quite what I want so I'll code it from scratch.

In the meantime, I know some people like dark styles. I like them myself sometimes (depending on mood and ambient lighting) so I've installed Prosilver Dark Edition as another option. It's basically Prosilver, with some nice custom touches and a dark colour scheme.

[Hawk]

That ProSilver Dark is interesting. I'm going to run that for a bit and see how it settles in for me.

[Gumboots]

It's cleaner than the original and has a better visual hierarchy on font sizes, although I still think some of those could benefit from a few tweaks.

Could easily be re-done as a light style too. IMO it's good to have a light one and a dark one. Light ones are better under bright lighting (tends to screw dark styles, especially if you get reflections on the screen). Dark styles are often better under dim lighting. Some people get migraines from light styles too.

Some of the current membergroup colours don't go so well with it (too much brightness and saturation) but those can be balanced a bit if necessary. I'm not so keen on the pulsing "new posts" icons either. I might tweak those to make them static. Flashing gifs are so 90's. Not that these are gifs, but it's a similar effect.

[RulerofRails]

I've been classically using Prosilver. But after experimenting with the others a bit lately, I realize it's a lot better to have a darker margin/background color. I like the Aero dark background, maybe drop the extra dark gradient near the top. But I like the classic Prosilver header the best.

Can't see myself using the dark theme. Hawk's current signature is one of those colors (dark blue) that doesn't fare well.

I'm not that fussy about looks, but I figured I would give my opinion anyway.

[Gumboots]

I find Prosilver very unappealing and IMO Aero is better, but it's not a huge favourite. Personally I think the header area on both of them is too fragmented. I prefer something like the screenshot back here: viewtopic.php?f=1&p=46728#p46717
...which to my eye is much cleaner.

That's just some minor CSS tweaks thrown at Prosilver Special Edition. Note that I did go for a darker surround. IMO the darker background distracts the eyes less than a light one, so interferes with reading less. I also prefer a fairly narrow content area because, again, it makes reading easier. There's no point trying to fill a wide monitor with long lines of text. It doesn't gain you anything in terms of usability.

One thing I learned years ago is that is you are going to have a range of styles it is generally better to not allow people to choose colours in posts and sigs, because they'll invariably choose one they think works well with whatever style they prefer and it probably won't work well with another style. OTOH if the colours are defined by the style then they always work well (assuming whoever designed it knows what they're doing).