The default style is OK, but after all these years I think Jelsoft needs to put some time into making at least a couple more styles. At least one dark style. A lot of people really like the dark black/gray style.
Yes, I know that you are going to say go to vBulletin.org and people will still have to do that for weird styles, but there should be more then one default style to chose from.
- vBulletin.org is nice, but so many times the developers are not professionals and their styles fail in so many areas, usually alignment issues.
- They open people up to security risks and cannot always be fixed as quick as Jelsoft can put out a patch.
- Most of the time support sucks, after a few months the designer at vBulletin.org stops responding to questions and your left up chit creek without a paddle, if your website completely relies on that style.
- It prevents people from having a secure vBulletin because they cannnot always easily update their vB with the current patches because doing so will most likely make you revert templates, or cause other issues. Since Jelsoft doesn't support these issues you have to wait for the vBulletin.org designer to fix them, assuming they ever do.
- Its Jelsoft's name on the line just as much as anyones. There is a vBulletin copyright link at the buttom of every page, and if the forum looks like complete crap, it makes Jelsoft look like crap to people that don't know much about vBulletin. It looks like Jelsoft did the crappy design.
- Almost none of the designers at vBulletin.org are supporting the Blog or Project Tools in their styles. I have found many styles I like but cannot use any of them because they fail horribly when viewing the blog and tools pages. Every once in a while I find one for blog, but I don't think I've ever noticed one that worked with project tools.
At the absolute minimum, Jelsoft needs to release all the default images in a format that works on any background color. Even if you get styles its sometimes hard to find all the buttons, icons, status icons, smilies, etc... to work correctly with the background you choose. The vBulletin.org designers do not always spend the time to make all of these icons over black matted, or what ever color you need. Yes, you can get these on vBulletin.org as well but there are some that are really hard to find, such as the thread status icons (new posts, no new posts, hot, hot with new posts, hot with no new posts, etc...). To this day I cannot find a nice set of those that work with any background color. I have asked over and over and over again. No one wants to take the time to make all of them.
If Jelsoft doesn't want to put in the effort to give the customers at least a couple more style choices the least they could do it make things a little easier to work with by providing transparent images.
This is the best forum software I have ever seen, and most likely, I will never use anything else, but a few more options would be nice. The front-end is just as important as the back-end, after all. Its the only part of the webiste my members/customers will ever see.
Stop trying to improve by adding more features and more code, and spend some time on the design for once. Since version 1.0 I have seen feature after feature introduced, some completely useless, others incredible, but have never even once, seen Jelsoft take the time to make another style.
Not everyone likes the same thing. People want a nice vBulletin community, but they also want a nice unique community without all of the constant hassle of the current design implementations.
