New forum style available; Beginning of Style Polls

[Archaic]

As we've previously mentioned elsewhere, switching over to XenForo has meant that we've had to pretty much start from scratch as far as forum styles are concerned. Sadly, there's no simple process to just convert those over.

While we are intending to have the old forum styles (in terms of colour schemes) return progressively over the coming months, this will be a fairly slow process. In fact, the process is taking a lot longer than we initially expected. We'd initially hoped to have the Christmas skin ready for you by the beginning of December, at currently it's looking like it won't be available until the 20th. The reason for the delay has been due to the development of a updated layout and general feel for the Christmas style, which is intended to be the base for our forums styles moving forward.

Because of that delay, we've decided to have a separate team of people working on some stop-gap styles, using the basic XenForo look and feel. These stop-gap styles will eventually be moved over to the new look, but for now they'll serve to give you a few additional options in case the Red of the ORAS style is a bit painful for you. It's a lot easier for us to produce these than it is to work on an entirely new layout, so we can afford to create a few of these for you to give you a lot more options sooner.

The first of these stop-gap styles is Bulbagarden Classic. We've used several variations on this colour scheme since 2000, and it was the original style that the Bulbagarden Forums reopened with in late 2002 when I took over as webmaster. You can switch to this style right now. At the bottom left of the forums, simply click on the style name (which should be ORAS for all of you currently) and open up the style chooser. Bulbagarden Classic should be the only other option in that list for now.

The next style however is completely up to you. If you go over to the MEMO: - Forum Style Development thread, you'll see I've uploaded preview images of most of the old Bulbagarden forum skins. We've selected 10 of the most popular skins from various eras of the forums. Go take a look, then vote for your top skin from that set. We'll develop the most popular skins from this list as placeholders (along with a few staff selected ones), and should have those ready for you before Christmas. This poll will close at the end of the weekend

 

[Archaic]

A second extra stop-gap style has been added. Misty's Cerulean Blues. This skin had already been under advance development for the new layout, so it was easy for us to move over.

 

[Archaic]

The Distortion World and Xerneas skins are now in active development as placeholders. If I can get both finished before Christmas, I'll work on Beast of the Sea for you as well.

 

[Almonds]

I'm really hoping for the Xerneas skin to return soon because of the soft blue. Can we also get the Sinnoh Underground as well? The brown background was much better for my eyes because they didn't display any strong colors.

 

[Archaic]

The Xerneas one will probably come before Distortion World at this rate. Darker skins are much harder to co-ordinate right.

 

[Stratelier]

Whatever this blue skin is called ... you know how the link colors are blue for topics with new posts and green for topics with no new posts? Can you reverse that? The whole thing being blue tinted makes green a more visible color by default, so it should be the one used to highlight new posts.

 

[Viridi]

Quick question, what are the general colors of the Distortion World skin? I was just curious, since I prefer black/brown themes due to them being easier on the eyes.

 

[Archaic]

Black, Purple, Burgundy.

 

[Splus13]

Good to see that Distortion World's coming back. I've always liked the dark colors of that stuff, and if i had gotten here earlier i would have voted for it.

 

[Archaic]

Various IRL issues have held up work on these skins. (My home getting flooded, followed by a bad case of food poisoning) I hope to resume work on them next week.

 

[Icy Wind]

I don't want to sound impatient but..... why are the distortion world and xerneas skins not ready yet? It's been 4 months since the poll was closed :/

 

[Dr. Buni]

Still waiting for the return of the Master Ball skin... All of the current skins are really underwhelming compared to it.

 

[Alola]

Or just any skin...the same four are getting quite dull and it's been several months...

 

[HumanDawn]

I'd love to see the April Fools 2007 "404 error" theme back... The black header on posts went well with the white background, it's the reason I use the ORAS theme. The other themes make it hard to read text with the distracting colour in the background.

 

[PaulTheProtist]

I'd like to see The World Beyond theme return. Dark themes are so much easier on the eyes.

 

[Blahmon]

I'd like to see The World Beyond theme return. Dark themes are so much easier on the eyes.

I couldn't agree more with you... those were the only themes i used just for that very reason (especially Distortion World), I really miss it my eye's and I really want it back Q_Q

 

[Icy Wind]

Five months and 19 days, and still no Distortion world or Xerneas skin on the horizon....

I'm sorry if i sounded disrespectful to the mods and Archaic's work, but the waiting is seriously getting tiresome ·_·

 

[Kogoro]

The staff members who have been working on converting old skins to XenForo haven't had time to work on more skins due to personal life concerns. We apologize for the inconvenience that this may be causing, but ask that you please bear with us.

 

[Seto_Koiba]

I'd like to see The World Beyond theme return. Dark themes are so much easier on the eyes.

That's why I always liked the the Black and White 2 skin when it came out, very easy on the eyes for me.