phpnuke themes are rubish!

geoff_bell · Hangin' Around Joined: Dec 07, 2006 Posts: 41

i am instantly turned-off by a nuke theme that is image-heavy.

all of the themes i have used over the years on nuke sites i have developed have basically just have the masthead and topic images. probably the most image-heavy theme i have used would be icgstation.

html and css compliance isn't a real concern, just so long as it looks reasonably nice, is easy to navigate, loads reasonably quickly and has relevant content. it's not so long since my sole way of getting onto the internet was dial-up and it would be safe to assume that many of my visitors would still be using that method.

image-heavy themes may be alright if your visitors are gamers and the likes with cable/dsl connections, but don't forget that if your visitors have no need for a higher-speed connection, then they aren't always likely to have one.

Lucifix · Hangin' Around Joined: Mar 11, 2005 Posts: 41

jaded wrote:

no offense Lucifix but your question has nothing really to do with this topic. It might have been better to make a new one instead of reopening this one from july which was about whether a nuke theme was rubbish or not. There are many places to find free nuke themes. Search google for nuke themes, then check the sites that show up.

None taken I just didn't want to open new topic couse you were just having conversation here that there isn't any quality / new themes/templates (still dont know what difference Smile

) for PHP-Nuke.

I think I'll start building new one, but some new idea would be usefull for me. And don't worry, I always use uncle Google before I post new post in any forum.

All I could use is any usefull link.

Thanks guys and girl afcore Wink

PS: I don't like image-heavy themes too, couse my site has pretty big visit and I have limited bandwidth too.

CodyG · Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2006 10:51 am

$0.02 from this non-gaming nuker ... theme maker wanna-be

I agree, if I'm going to add images to my site, then they are going to be *my* images and not some other persons idea of my reality. And many of my users are still on dial-up or lite-cable or macs or 600x800 res. I'd rather have a simple theme and provide more content ... like left and right side blocks.

Some say "just" modify an existing theme. Good idea and plan, if you haven't a clue where to start. imho, nuke themes are complicated puppies and I don't even know if there is a standard for 7.6 patched.

I would think if you were in a hurry and you had some dollars you would seek one of the many excellent commercial themes available and/or their authors.

However, if you insist on going down the theme maker wannabe path on your own, then first make a plan.

Play with the html in an existing theme, you'll learn about theme structure only by manipulating it. Read the phpnuke manual... everything on themes

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Draw out your idea with a graphic editor or on paper. Make a list of all the elements you'll need for everything. Again, keep learning how other themes were made. Maybe some of what you need has already been written? Or do you need special knowledge? Begin to pull together the graphics, the pieces of code and your .css and test, test, test.

That's as far as I ever got with building my own theme. It's a complex puppy. I loose it when I start to try to make forums compatible with my creations, then I "make-do" and go away in a huff. Wink

There were some phpnuke theme tutorials out there, at least for basic nuke (not forums) and one of the best is in the PHP-Nuke book by Douglas Paterson. I just tried a quick google for php-nuke tutorials it got me mostly dead ends. But I did find a good tutorial on .css at jaded-designs.

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Hope that helps and I'm looking forward to seeing your success.
Have a happy nuking day.

Lucifix · Hangin' Around Joined: Mar 11, 2005 Posts: 41

@CodyG: thank you very much for you kind words. After New Year I will start planing how my new PHP-Nuke site will look like. The project will not be easy, couse I did so so so many mini modifications on my site, but with good will I think I'll do it.

Cheers!

geoff_bell · Hangin' Around Joined: Dec 07, 2006 Posts: 41

ah yes. i thought about the visitor having loading issues because of graphics via dial-up, but i hadn't thought about running out of bandwidth with the site host!

i've been having issues with bandwidth with two of my nuke sites this last few months. one ran out of bandwidth three weeks in (which is odd as it wouldn't be the most visited website), and another has used 85% after 10 days.

i've tended to keep images hosted with the likes of photobucket.com for the guts of a year now to keep bandwidth down so i can allow for an increase in visitors, but i think my bandwidth issues may lie with script kiddies trying to get in.

soirry for going a little off-topic at the end there.

jakec · Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 7:07 am

You can still get a reasonably good looking site with just a few graphics and if you compress your images properly you should still be able to get small sized images, without losing much quality.

How much bandwidth do you have?

If you check your logs is there anything suspicious? Lots of bots?

geoff_bell · Hangin' Around Joined: Dec 07, 2006 Posts: 41

i'm actually thinking of altering the robots file to get them to visit less regularly. it's nice to have my latest articles picked up by the likes of google almost straightaway, but at the same time i'd rather have bandwidth used by visitors than search engines.