You have probably noticed a
significant change in appearance here since you last logged in. I have created the new design for a couple of reasons. The most important are usability, security/maintenance, and a more appealing look.
I have also installed and tweaked so many MOD's for phpBB that the code was just getting out of hand. Updates were a pain. Hence taking too long and having idiots exploit the problem.
A couple of the big features in the new design are:
1. Less images, cleaner layout
2. Smaller header area, so the forums and topics are at the top where you want them
3. Quick-access panel on the right of the forum index for stats and accessing common stuff
4. The "Forums" option on the main menu drops down to give quick access to all the parts of the forum
5. Unregistered users see a welcome message and small ad at the top of the page - logging in gets rid of the entire area so registered users don't have to see a message, and never ever see ads on the forums.
6. All new button sets (still need to finish a couple minor ones)
7. All new codebase - fresh install of latest phpBB and re-apply latest version of the Cash mod (furions).
8. No more HTML signatures
A couple things that are now missing in the new design:
1. No more dark style!! Yep.. for now, anyway. I'm thinking about a minor offspring of this design with dark backgrounds, more like the old template, but same layout. Feedback welcome!
2. Profile CP. The advanced user profile system is GONE. It was, IMHO, a burden to the maintenance of the forum and didn't really do much of any good. I am almost done compiling a list of MOD's that I am willing to install, and I will post them in a poll here so everyone can decide what they would most like to see. I alos installed easyMOD so I can setup a number of MOD's in a matter of minutes, whereas before it took 15-60 minutes per.
Consider this change the first step in the version 3 release of Fury-Tech. I'll continue to tweak a bit on the forums, we can think of the best stuff we all want to see, and the final step will come when I'm happy with the status of Thundermist 2 (the CMS Fury-Tech will be on), and merge everything together.
Please let me know what you think of the new style. It seems pretty simple but it actually took me a
lot of tweaking to get to this point. Simplicity, I have found, is one of the hardest things to achieve in design while still maintaining functionality.
Please note that
HTML has been removed from signatures! Please take all HTML code from your sigs and just use BBcode. This will greatly improve things from a maintenance and security standpoint, I hope you understand.
Enjoy! (I hope
)