Sorry Expanda, but I dont like the look at all. Not enough contrast on this new look at all. The old look was clear and the sub forums could be found easily. I am using my PC with Windows 7 and FireFox. Please do give us back the old look. Some well defined boarders would be a good start.
Sometimes new is not necessarily good.
As to the media thingy with all the photo's? We dont need them cluttering up our screens. There is another forum i use to frequent that had that feature. i dont go there any more.
That's my 2 cents worth.
Let me ask a question or two.....
1) So you don't like seeing pictures when you log into the sites home page?
2) What if the media gallery was removed and we extracted images from existing attachments and featured them on the home page?
3) What if you could select your own colour scheme as a personal preference what would that be?
To be clear, the forum is community based and run by volunteers.
The site is a free resource for all to use and significant investment both financial and personal has gone into -
a) Running the site in the past and future
b) In adding in new features like the media gallery to give you new options to interact with the forum
c) Continued investment in backend managmemt
Your indirect indication you may leave if we continue to 'clutter the screen' is dissapointing and it would be sad for this to happen in the attempt to provide you with more for free.
As a bit of background when we moved the site across to Xenforo the biggest feature that we lost was a media gallery and at the first opportunity we have 're instated that option.
This is not just any media gallery and if you dive into its options and features you will see what I mean.
Further to this the reason why the media gallery was the biggest thing we missed in that transition is because we are a media rich site as photos form a huge part of culture around outdoors.
If you haven't seen the stats on the home page we host:
22,269 Attachments
17GB of storage for media
That means on average 1 in 4 posts on our site contains attachments or images so wether on the home page or embed within posts we are a very media rich website.
My vision for the site is to continue to embrace this media and I am open to constructive feedback around how we best showcase that media to all users so we can share our passion in the realistic form of media.
Some ideas are to display it as a sidebar vs across the page for instance.
I hope to continue this discussion but again need to keep in mind the fact we are media rich and how do we embrace that affectively.