No, this isn't any kind of leaving topic. I am sorry to see so many beloved members leave but that is their decision and the door is always open to them.

This is a topic for the future of FFF. A few days ago I thought there was no way to dig ourselves out of the whole we got into, but so many members have expressed their loyalty to the forum and I think with their help we can really get things done around here. So, this is a thank you to everybody that has decided to stay with us through the hard times. I'm not going to name names but everyone that has been here in the past or people that are here with us now. Thank you.

I think to symbolize our new era, a skin change is going to be taking place. I invite all of you to check out http://www.ifsz.com/ and reccomend any skins you'd like to see. We are open to ideas.

Also, any other thoughts or concerns you have please speak up. This forum is still all about the members and this topic is for you. We're open to ideas.

so should we post our recommendations in here or should we just PM them to you?
I think this is a great idea by the way. Boost morale. Get past the...past.

wow that site is like a candy shop soo much to look at i loved alot of em, though i kinda like this skin we have now lots too... but looking around here are the ones that i liked out of most of em... ya i like darker ones >.>


Mixed side:

Northea?

Enhanced Dark:

Crystalline
Dreams of Darkness
Extenuise <3 purple ^^
WarZone

First off, the only one's that ShivaDiva posted that I think would really work, is the Extenuise Purple one, but I really think the Purple color would have to change...

The rest are just to heavily focused on grey. I mean I don't want to come to the site and see a massive display of bright lights and pansy pinks and light yellows, but please...no all mainly blacks! :o :p

Here's a skin I edited and changed up a bit after I talked to the creater, and Melancholy Rockit made the banner to spice it up for:



It's Final Fantasy themed, but I talked to the creater and he let me change the colors and everything in teh coding to set up this look. It's somewhat from FFXI if I recall. You can see the character face and the words "Final Fantasy" along the bottom of the forum separaters.

If you want a full view of a site that has this being used as a set-up with member buttons, groups, posts, yada yada, give me a PM, I'll direct you to it if you want to take a look at it in full view and not just a test site.

To by honest, I like the purple one...gives us a metro kinda feel XP.



Can you only look at skins if you have a registered account? Since I don't plan on posting, can someone just give me a username and password so I can scan without the tedious process of registering?

The one BustaMo and MR made up has a really nice color format. Would be a good skin to start up with again, especially if we spruce up some of the banners and buttons and all with AzA's sweet photoshop skills.

lol ya those were just ones i liked, i dont do skins or even have the slightest clue about formatting them, but it was fun to look!


ohhh i like that one busta, and its colorful but not bright and in your face..


i think that one would work really well
part of that one looks kinda like a skin i saw almost put up there with those called crystal clear...
either way i likes it, and the only part of the estenuise i liked was the purple lol!
but then again i would do everything in purple and red if i could... but i think yours captured FFF really well!

Wow. To be honest, I was expecting a "thank you for killing the place" speach. Props to you for not bowing out.

I really like the one that Busta posted. It still has our classic "dark" theme to it, but it has some vibrant color. The only problem is the blue can kinda hurt my eyes since it is a tad bright.

Yea, Ross already has me in line to work on new graphics for the new skin.

As for those ones, meh...I really dont like any of them too much. I guess it's because I am part of literally hundreds of IF boards, and 99% of them use dark themed skins. I think a light themed skin would be quite refreshing and breathe new life into the forum.

I`m all for the one Busta made, Its great blue is the color that is colorful but not so bright. I`ve always been a big fan of the kinda color Busta gave us so yeah I reccommend Busta`s!

I like the one bustamo presented, but I also think AzA has a valid point. I haven't yet looked through the skins, but I will... after I sign up... (or when somebody posts a generic username and password for us? *hopefull look*) and give you my opinions.

Well what do you know? I already have a username.. hehe

here are a couple I liked of the light skins
Amped Green
Audiox
Beige Tech
annnddd Brushed Red (Which I think would be ballin' with a few changes and fixes)

Alright, I just realized how crappily I made that banner. I wasn't using photoshop and I made that in like 5 minutes. But I do like the color setup there.
I liked the purple one Shiva brought up. But I'm really kind of sick of grey.
And the Beige one RD put up would be cool if the outer background wasn't white.

I'll post my recommendations later when I have more time

Okay, I have a little suggestion, unrelated to the skinnage of this forum (although a light one might be a nice change...we've hard dark for as long as I can remember)

Right now there isn't much a need to, but when (not if) this place picks up, maybe we can go a little easy on the modding, especially the quickness to close threads and/or ban members. Granted, no one wants for threads to become flamefests, but locking the thread, and thus completely ending the conversation between the two, doesn't really resolve anything, and just keeps the two parties angry at the issue. And relatively recently, there were threads that were closed because of a tongue-in-cheek remark that mods thought would maybe, eventually lead to a flamefest, or a somewhat immature, yet authentic heated debate which had comments misconstrued as flame. We're all adults (or relatively close to it). I don't think that we really need our conversations monitored so closely.

My fun idea: I've seen this on alot of forums (including a FF forum), and, surprisingly, the members there are very close knit. Maybe a 'tough skinned, NWS' forum, with very, very loose moderation, where it is the ONLY acceptable place for any garbage, including cursing, rants, arguments, maybe even 'call outs' etc. Then, instead of locking a thread, you can move it there. Add a discretion label about how you should only enter if you've got the sack to handle it. I think it'd be a fun place, honestly, and add alot of color and humor to the place. Just for consideration...but seriously, let's do it.


Also, lets take it a little easier on the newbs for a while...alot of them have shown concern about the rezzing rule because they're newbs, and they get bashed alot by the higher-ups...elite members, mods, admins...everyone, pretty much...and they ended up leaving prematurely. If we bashed
BustaMo for being the worst rezzer ever, which he was when he joined, we'd be missing a huge component to these forums...lets not let that happen in the future.



I wrote this in 4 different sittings, as i get easily distracted, so it's probably not very fluid. Nice.

i like the suggestions you made Pepe. I think the toughskin board might be good for us. But, I dont think we should implement that until it shows we really need it again. Because, to be honest, most of the people that were part of the flame fests are now gone. That's not a bash to anyone, its just true.

I also agree we should let up on the newbs a bit. Like, maybe there should be a Newb Mod perhaps, where they not only watch the new members, but they also help them and explain the rules. It doesn't help when not only the staff but other members are PMing you to stop doing this or stop doing that. It kinda discourages you from posting a lot. Just an idea.

EDIT: My recs

GaiaHeretext. Maybe without the weird green color. But I like it cause its not blinding bright, but not like the last 2 we've had.
Faltered hesitance. This is more of a maybe. I just kinda like how its not all squares or circles.

and those are the only 2 i feel like recommending cause yea

so fars i likes the brushed red that RD suggested, and the faltered hesitance that MR said, only thing about light backgrounds is dark for me is easier on the eyes esp at night which i when i have the most time to check on stuff. but thats personal preference honestly what ever the skin becomes ill still come around.

as far as the mods go i think for the level of activity for now what we have is fine. good idea for the toughskin thingy but again hopefully we all have realized that what was done in the past isnt working and know now what needs to be done to revive what seems to have been missing.

Well, considering our moderating group has shrunk JUST A LITTLE, it'll probably be easier to make sure we know what level of moderating is required for certain situations. You bring up valid points, but at the same time we don't want flame wars and sometimes a slap on the wrist (or several) isn't enough, so you gotta shut down the source.

I see bad things coming from this "tough skin" forum, but the suggestion is duely noted and we'll discuss it.

Annnyyways, I really like the faltered hesitance skin MR posted.

This is not really about the skin... I think we should clean up the forums. Not posts/topics, but members. Members with 0 post count I mean. We have 1886 members, and I think only 2/3 of them have ever posted.

If you come here for the first time, you think, "Wow! Awesome lot of members!" And then 10-20 of them are active =.='
Ad if you say "But what if they'll start posting sometime?" Well, they can just as easily create a new account ^^

okay I have to give this a go, this skin I liked allot.

thumbs up

its dark but has a few bright colors. I made put it on the board for my freind over a month ago, and he sais he aint gunna use it sooo...

That's quite a nice one Kingtard, my other two favourites were RD's Brushed and this one that Supershiva (I think) posted.

Btw I thought the forum already was kind of relaxed already in terms of modding. Though I agree that sometimes threads get closed a little too early. Most of the problems though were caused by people with very short fuses and no self-control randomly flaming one another without thinking.

Anyway I think a change of skin would be a great thing, if only so people think that it looks different instead of uttering the clichéd line of "Aaaaaah the forum is dead!!!" which doesn't make any sense when you think about the fact that they are still posting on it...

Btw I don't really like forums with a white background, as that's the standard IF colour and doesn't look special.

Oh and the next person who says “This forum is dead, it used to be fun here but now it’s not” should be slapped :)

I really like the Nothea skin that Shiva posted, and RD's brushed is nice as well.
But I agree with the Turk, white is too much. Way too bright. But, even worse is a black background. It just seems like it doesn't have any feeling.

As for Kingtard's skin, it looks nice... but the blue font >.< It doesn't match the background at all.

well someone can always ask if they can change it.
My comp is really slow, and havn't been able to check the other ones, so I cant vote on any.

Is it not possible to have multiple skins? I've been on boards where you could pick between several of them.

Skin selectors are very complex and the coding is nighmarishly long. You need the Style Sheet code for each skin you want to use, and it just becomes a jumbled mess.

jeez I tried one one time...took for ever, I ended up just saying screw it and giving up. one skin is good enough I think

To be perfectly honest the current skin is a tad to boring and bland. I mean grey? C`mon its dull. Maybe a dark-ish blue color would be good or any color that would look good dark. Bright colors are bad because they just melt the eyeballs. But I think most of us here would like a dark blue color or something colorful but dark at the same time. Also if it were to be a dramatic change in color it just really wouldn`t be FFF now would it? FFF should keep to the aforementioned things above.

okies finished looking at all the other skins aside from the ones already mentioned here are others i liked too

Dark Depression

Metal Dream



Final Fantasy - Shivan Blue <-- ^^ a skin themed after shiva how cute

lol...women...so funny...lol well if you want dark blue, go with the one I put.

or... we could go totally radical here..

keep the one we have ^^

heh.. personally I liek this one..
but if you guys whant a change.. get one that is easy to read the text on..
not one that will kill your eyes after 3 minutes reading..

hi im back...
well I think the one we have, it a little to old. We need something new

I'm glad to see you are all up for a change in skins, or at least open to the idea. Whenever next time I can get all 3 of us on MSN (Brett, Aza, and I) we'll do some deciding.