Banners are Back! Tweaked SSMB Design

[Dreadknux]

I'm prepping a few things in order for us to properly celebrate TSS' 20th anniversary, and I've just made the first change - it should be obvious to anyone who likes looking at the top of web pages.

Yep, banners are back! I got rid of them a long time ago in order to provide a much leaner design (minimalism is apparently better), but I found it hard to use that design to promote special events or otherwise offer some additional character to the site.

Let me know what you guys think of what I've come up with -- the 'Sonic Adventure 2' banner background and random mottos (remember when we had those from waaaay back when?) is just one type of header design I've built into the site. If you're viewing SSMB on a desktop, the banner is what you see - but if you're viewing on smaller screens (a tablet, for example) the character-specific silhouette will replace it (so, Sonic's head will still be there on iPads). On mobile, the header had nothing but the site logo and a checkerboard background - with this tweak, I've also managed to incorporate the character silhouette into the header, behind the logo. Sonic's always watching...

The good news with this design tweak, is that I can customise the header at will now. If I (or you) get bored of the banners on desktop, I can tweak it to revert back to the character silhouette with ease. And, when we get closer to TSS' 20th anniversary, I've coded an extra header style that will allow us to celebrate the site's past. Stay tuned for that!

Also, with this change we can now move full-steam ahead with a banner-creation event that we've been thinking of doing, similar to what we did ten years ago for our 10th anniversary.

Let me know your thoughts, and there will be more tweaks and changes (and additions) to come...!

[Zaysho]

Glad to see best box art as the first banner.

[Badnik Mechanic]

The Count Duckula and Barry Chuckle banners are the one true banners!

[Volcan Pacaya]

2 hours ago, Dreadknux said:

I got rid of them a long time ago in order to provide a much leaner design (minimalism is apparently better), but I found it hard to use that design to promote special events or otherwise offer some additional character to the site.

Well, I think it looks a helluva lot better.

Fan sites aren't boring neutral office buildings. They need character.

[Solister]

*cries in Tails Theme*

I mean, the idea of the random phrase is pretty cool, not much fan of SA2 so that banner adds nothing to me. Make it customizable and I close deal. But personally, only for those two things I'll keep with my little boy.

While off-topic, I guess this is also the nearest place to ask/suggest

The first one is: Sonical 2020 is actually probably the most advanced theme in the forums - A stylized logo, icons on the tabs, images on the news, and now, banner and random phrases add-ons. Any chance we see those on the other themes too?

Also, I see it's been a good while the sub forums icons are bugged. Is it hard to fix them?

Just now I realized there's a Sonic Fan Game Club...

I'm not much sure about this one, so correct me if I'm wrong. I remember for a short while the favicon was related with the theme you used. Am I daydreaming? If not, could these be restored? I think they're removed accidentally in an update.

Last, but not least, I think this is the 3rd time I'm asking this, but maybe the first time someone who can make it happen is reading. Is there any chance to we see STK Maniacs from TSS on the forums too?

Enjoying the bug report but now going completely off-topic, I noticed that if you create a status by pressing the + Create button, it doesn't appear in your profile unless you click to See My Activity and then Status Updates. The main reason I'm probably the only person who use that button for creating status update is because it's more friendly with slow internet users.

And by the way, Happy Celebrations TSS!

Edit: Hope I'm not being rough, tho. That's, of course, not my intention. Just clarifying because I'm worried this post can be misinterpreted.

Edited May 12, 2020 by Solister

[Dreadknux]

Thanks for the feedback, Solister! All good suggestions - definitely will work on them (although not sure how or why posting is going slow or buggy, might be a code/server thing).

The alt themes are going to be deprecated (they already should be - I thought I moved everyone over to the Sonical 2020 theme a while ago but I guess it didn’t take) as some of them are super old and the wonks on them won’t be fixed. Instead we will introduce new versions based on this new design (we just needed to finalise and get it 100% right before we started doing that). I just need to tighten up one or two things (the subforum icons being one of them!!) and we can get to work  

And yes, the plan is to make sure there is some kind of uniformity between site and forum so at some point I’ll bring STK Maniacs over to SSMB, when I have time.

[Marcello]

Catfish Dark has got to be the first to be upgraded.

We all know it should've come before Sonical.

[MetalSkulkBane]

Neat... buuut

1) Most important: I'm not fan of the little qoutes. The joke will get fast quick. Even if you keep adding new quote, "Oh no! Are weapons are useless!" just isn't that sacred line that I need repeating for me. I strongly advice to just remove it.

2) I love Shadow, but logically speaking there is some part of the fandom who don't and would prefer to see someone else at the top.
Easiest answer would be to switch to something with just Sonic (or large number of characters, but that could get crowded).
Harder would be giving us several options. Maybe make topic "What banners you want" and people will throw suggestion and "thumb up" ideas by other people. If everyone will be allowed 1 idea per post it's gonna be easy to count which ones are popular.

[Eurisko]

Hi Guys. I like the new banner for the forums and the changing quotes from the series.

Could we possibly get a Shadow dark theme? sort of like twitters 'Lights Out'? I like the 'sonical 2020' but the intensity of the blue gets at my eyes after a bit. I was using the Big The Cat purple theme which was fine so even something like that would be cool.

As always thank you for this place and take care.