Just fired up our new forum: http://www.youlookfab.com/welookfab

Love to know what people think. I’ve stripped out a lot of the great features that work for a techie crown, but might confuse newer users (e.g. tags, favorites, etc.). We might bring those back in over time.

Everything is achieved in the template/theme, except for a minor hack to create an alternative post form.

The experience is integrated with a WordPress blog, but this is no deeper than sharing the same header. Databases are separate and users only sign up to bbPress.

There are many potential improvements, but one thing that bugs me in particular is that there are two signups on the site: one for bbPress and another for the blog post notification. I would love to integrate these two things. Any pointers on how to do so would be appreciated.

Thanks to the bbPress team for a fun and flexible forum system!

[@sayremedia Member 17 years ago]

…one thing that bugs me in particular is that there are two signups on the site: one for bbPress and another for the blog post notification. I would love to integrate these two things. Any pointers on how to do so would be appreciated.

The one aspect I found a little confusing was the links to the blog and forum. Perhaps if you make the point size larger, or add text coloring, those words would pop out. The tabbed color coding is fine, it’s just that the point size does not stand out from the rest of the text on the page. Overall, though, I like the look and feel of your site. Well done!

In regards to your question, have you read this page on the bbPress site?

https://bbpress.org/documentation/integration-with-wordpress/

Scroll down to where it says “Registration”. I hope that helps.

[@lookfab Member 16 years, 12 months ago]

Thanks for the input sayremedia. I see your point on the links to blog and forum not popping out. We’ll be thinking about how to achieve that with the next rev of the site.

Yeah, I have read the WordPress integration info. The thing is that I don’t want users to be able to log into the wordpress blog. I would like to combine the forum and email notification lists though.

[@_ck_ Participant 16 years, 12 months ago]

I really like that idea of colored tabs at the top as “forums”. Very pretty and skips all the jargon that newbies won’t know.

(You did it with graphics instead of css, but still very clever.)

[@schmitt Member 16 years, 12 months ago]

Very nice design.

[@wordpressbob Member 16 years, 12 months ago]

I second that design. I think it looks awesome and I would’ve never thought it was bbpress, but a custom design.

Do you have any tips on how you came about redesigning the template?

Thanks!

[@trex33 Member 16 years, 12 months ago]

One of the best WP + bbPress designs I have seen outside of 9rules. Excellent Lookfab!

[@lookfab Member 16 years, 12 months ago]

Thanks very much for the kind words.

WordPressl, I mock up a few different design options in PhotoShop and when I’m happy there I move to the code. Since this was my first exposure to bbpress I ended up iterating between PS and the code a lot as I got to understand bbpress better. The challenge was to keep the flavor of the blog, but still make it clear to the user that they are somewhere different.

The mechanics of the template are similar to the default theme. The different look is achieved mostly through the CSS stylesheet. One major change to the layout is to add a floating div for the sidebar on the left. All the rollovers are CSS. I do the tabs simply in php by checking which forum the user is in and displaying the tab bar appropriately. Most of the other changes are actually about hiding some of the power of bbpress.

I’m glad the “tabs” resonate. I had a full working site in beta without them, but just wasn’t happy. The breadcrumb is a little subtle (particularly for folks who are new to a forum), and with only 4 forums and no sub-forums seems like overkill. But without the breadcrumb the user is lost once they’re in one of the forums or topics. The tab solves that and makes it easy to get to any forum from almost everywhere.