WEBSITE COLORS REVISITED

[our2cents]

Thanks very much for the feedback.

I understand all too well the dilemna that comes along with changes to forums and sites.  It can be a real pain.  I also understand the locking open source down aspect of things.  I've run into problems myself.

I would say to keep it as it appears today, with the blue.  It is not a bad setup at all in comparison to many I've seen and use each week.  Thanks for considering everyone's views.

[northside lurker]

I did vote, and chose "blues" simply for aesthetic purposes. (I like blue)  So, having said that, I'm not very picky.

[ForumManager]

Thanks very much for the feedback.

Just  a  note:
If you use mozilla products (firefox at least) you can take away ALL STYLES instantly in the view menu and make any page plain. 
It is an exceptional  feature that Internet Explorer does not offer. Try it! Very cool.
You can also  override any website's colors by choosing your own in your  browser settings.... both in IE and Mozilla.
They are simple changes though without many options.

I chose the default theme for the forum because I know it will work.  I can  change the CSS styles and save the default theme as different color schemes and offer them as theme changes - it will take a lot of time....  maybe in the future. I dealt with a server outage just today and with AOL bouncing emails  yesterday... it is always something.

I can also add optional "ready made" themes for the users to choose, but it can be very problematic. It would need to be "USER BEWARE" The forum is a software program and is developed open source. Anyone is able  to design  a theme. The problem is that some of the themes offered don't work right with the software and users report back many problems with the features. I can perhaps provide some links here to other forums using optional themes and get feedback.

I am a volunteer providing this site to the community and don't have the time to answer complaints about themes not behaving correctly.   I've made changes to the template code by putting navigation at the top and links at the bottom.  I am not  professional PHP programmer and tampering with code  any further without expertise can lead to HUGE security breaches. I am hosting other sites on this server and I can't open them up to security holes. I have modifications installed but they have been tested by the developers.

The main site is a content management system. I designed a simple template  for it to avoid formatting problems for most users and for use with most browsers. It is boring and is meant to be, because boring is functional. Again, it will take much time to come up with new color schemes and give users a choice. 

FM

[our2cents]

The poll doesn't have enough options.  There should be another option of Other in your poll...I didn't vote, just this response.

I would like to see more options to choose from under the user profile options.  Each person could then set the color theme they find to be easiest for them to see.  Some people have different vision problems and acuity levels.  Some blends of color work great together, some don't for them.  That way you could give people more options to choose and make it less of a what you see is what you get forum.

If you decide to go this route, you probably want to give a high contrast in several color options, in addition to some of the others available out there.

I've found the colors in these screen shots to be very helpful with my vision (The gray tones down the brightness, and the white background still allows clear contrast...it's still a work in progress...I often wish for more color options on web forums):

[ForumManager]

I have decided to change the colors on the website.
It seems when I look at it from different computers the non standard "blue-green" becomes mud.
It is REALLY UGLY.
This has been the case in about half the computers that I've checked. 
So I am going to go with something more standard... websafe colors

Maybe I will "decorate " for the Holidays and change it over in the new year.

I'm putting  it to a vote.
Vote here if you care.
I will say I am leaning toward earth tones.