OK, to be honest, and start off on a good note, I just want to say that I absolutely LOVE this site! It's run nice, it's convenient as he**, and I fixed most my Sims 3 problems by coming here, in only a week's time!

But my main concern is the fact that this website tends to get VERY

VERY

VEEERYY

confusing during navigating, from the menu, to the 'clutteredness' to even posting a new thread!

I love this site, and I am not trying to bad mouth it, but it honestly needs renovations- I've never had the 'lost' feeling from being on a website.

I've made website's before, using straight HTML, none of that drag and drop crap, but I'd love to lend a hand to help! One thing that makes a website great is it's presentation.

Honestly, presentation is key.

Thanks for reading and HOPEFully, not banning me/deleting this thread/getting mad at me/flaming me in the comments- i offered to help xD

Hi blakfyr,

Don't worry, you won't get banned for posting your thoughts about the website, as long as you do so politely (as you have done here)!

It's true, MTS is quite a confusing site for new comers. It's sometimes even confusing for old timers! But I don't think that's related to the theme, per se, the difficulty the site faces is that it covers so many different aspects of the community: game help, modding help, downloads, social groups, social discussion, news, tutorials, the gameplay wiki... And all of these things for both TS2 and TS3! It's quite complicated to come up with a shared structure which makes it easy to find whatever a particular user is looking for.

For example, you most likely came looking for game help, so it would have been much easier for you if we had been able to emphasize and streamline your experience towards the Game Help sections more. But many other people come for other things, and as soon as we try to emphasize and streamline all the different aspects of the site equally, well... You end up with what we already have!

Your offer to assist is very generous, and I'm always pleased to hear about people buliding directly with HTML, (I strongly believe in learning the actual underlying languages of the tools we use, not just relying on wysiwyg 'site builders'!) but I don't think we're looking for anyone to help in the HTML side of the site at the moment.

However, if you have any specific suggestions on how we could adjust or restructure the site to make it more accessible for all our different types of users, please do share them with us. Making the site both easy to use and easy to maintain is a puzzle we're continuously working on, and carefully thought out opinions from members are always welcome and can be quite helpful in that process.

oh actually, you don't you have to let me into the HTML part of the site, that's an obvious hacker thin-(GAAASPP!! YOU SPELLED MY NAME RIGHT LOL), anyways, that's more of a hacker thing. but, actually, I'm a graphic designer (aspiring) and I'd just design the theme/template and you guys could implement it.

It'll be fun for me, it'll keep me occupied (my grandma hates me being bored, because I get...unruly xD) and there's no skin of anyone's teeth! ^_^

is that alright? nothing has to be in writing or anything, or official, i just wanna do it basically see what you think when it's done, and even then it'll still be at your guys discretion to use it and so forth

I'd be happy to see peoples designs - but one thing that you have to absolutely be aware of (and Echo has already hinted at this) is the different types of people who visit the site.

You have:
- People who come for Downloads (95%+ of all people only view downloads)
- People who come for Help
- People who come for the Community (chatting about Sims, etc)
- People who Create items and want to learn how to do it (what this site was founded on!)

And then you have staff

So in essence, the site has 4 main user types, each of which want something different. This is in addition to the front page, and also remember that browsing for downloads and viewing them are different things.

I already have a number of ideas on how to actually help with the navigation and have experimented over the years with this, but it's tough, primarily becuase I don't have time. So, go ahead and make some stuff, I'd be happy to see what you come up with.

*GASSP* I have the divine graces of Delphy himself :O...This is ah-mazing! Thanks man, I'll be sure to put everything I know into it! If there's anymore information you want me to take into account, just lemme know :D

hi blakfyr999, the redesign of the site templates is something very dear to my own heart, and I would also love to see some ideas. However, do bear in mind that in addition to straight HTML and php variables there is a dynamic aspect to the site: that is, the content is user generated for the most part and any design you make would have to take that into account.

Personally, I would love to just declutter the place a bit - cosmetics such as a more modern postbit and forumdisplay structure are actually pretty high on my list, as are profiles.

Take a look about the site - view some profiles (creators and none creators tend to look a tad different) and threads and come back with some mock-ups. I look forward to them as I am not much of a designer and other ideas and so on really do help.

Please also bear in mind that we like to optimise, so images and stuff which would require database-heavy queries should be used sparingly.
And, of course, I feel I should point this out - we're unlikely to implement your designs and/or ideas directly, but we certainly will take inspiration from and adapt them, especially if they include any particularly cool elements which we hadn't thought of ourselves.

"in addition to straight HTML and php variables there is a dynamic aspect to the site" definately- that's one of my main concern's is making it worthwhile no matter what the condition

and whiterider all i can see is this: ...aww that kinda was a pretty hard blow to, but i understand it (can i get a HNNNGG about now lol!) I'm trying to steer clear of heavy images/scripts, but as i'm planning out that could be hard though.

btw, speaking of, i have a website already. i just tested how long it takes to load the home pages of each, mine didn't do as bad as i was scared it was- the only thing that made it slow was loading the header image, which is actually rather large. and i think it may be set to 300 dpi settings on accident...god i hope not.

anyways, besides my graphics arts/music i don't use it, so i'll gladly donate some of it's usage to you guys if you need it xD but i'll worry about that much later, for now i just want to get the theme done first.

EDIT: AND while I'm talking to an ***load of admins, where are the siggy's!? i take it the rules say no siggy's...i need 2 go back and read those....

Here are the site rules:
http://www.modthesims.info/fd.php?f=63

One of them discusses signatures.

dang, no graphic siggies. on another forum i make flash siggies actually LOL! any chance of having those enabled Delphy? i consider them a major part of every forum. other sites usually put a limit of 500x100 dimensions, which i find somewhat managable and fair, personally

EDIT: been touring the site alot lately, looking for ways to make everything work seemlessly together. i've noticed two things that could absolutely destroy any ideas i have.
1) it would be ESPECIALLY hard to incorporate a new theme into the already existing vBullentin, due to the immense amount of different types of pages
2) the fact that you want a more optimized site makes it even HARDER.

I'm trying to find solutions to both. the vBul one being the harder one, since I've never messed around with it internally. I have a friend who I helped create an inventory system with (again, I did just the theme) but maybe he'll have some insight

Last edited by blakfyr999 : 11th May 2012 at 01:49 AM.

Well, the vB can be customised a lot. If you have a look at our downloads browser, that is a mangled version of the normal forum view; and the download pages themselves are mangled versions of the normal thread view. We can rearrange, add and remove elements pretty much as we like, as well as changing pretty much every aspect of an element's appearance, so radical redesigns aren't a problem.
You don't need to be carefully weighing every element in the balance to see how optimised it is (or isn't) - I just meant to warn against really excessive and unnecessary stuff.

There will be basically zero chance of me ever enabling images in signatures. It's one of the first things I turned off when I started modding vBulletin. I personally loathe images in signatures because it detracts from what the person has to say, and whats a forum for, if not to share what you have to say?

As for the templating thing - don't worry about it so much (including you lee!). I can easily take a design and chop it up into bits. The entire site runs off vBulletin, including the download browser and download pages, and they are clearly heavily modified - in fact they are just a complete HTML page in their own right, just with stuff inserted in via PHP.

One tip I would give you is this: Don't try and replicate what we have already. Most of it has been built up over years, and can probably be thrown away and just start again from scratch.

Okay i see now. oh, GOD, php. remember i was talking about that inventory system?...he was coding that thing in php, and it was a dread for me when he explained some of that stuff haha, but out of those lectures from hell, i DID learn about the way php does that templating system so i understand what you mean there

Also, I bought a template (i usually START from templates, and end up radically changing them) for both this, AND my personal website, but it was 4 for the price of 1, so i was already gonna get it, now i just had reason.

I can't wait till I get done already, looking forward to it!


Thanks you guys, you are absolutely WONDERFUL admins, mods, and owners!...er, owner.

EDIT: workin on it now, but i need images of sims. if any of you guys wanna upload some of yours, that'd be great

Last edited by blakfyr999 : 12th May 2012 at 04:52 AM.

A few ideas.

I like the look of http://www.instructables.com/ - especially given that they have a similar multi-section setup going on (create, explore, contests, community).

Additionally, I like the style of the buttons and layout of Bootstrap - maybe with a blue theme though (since thats MTS colours).

Please don't forget to include spaces for ads.

You can find pictures of sims in the Sims Pictures section, and most of the posters would probably be happy if their sim was used for MTS.

And since there is not much chance that your new theme would be used "as is", borrowing sims from the sims pictures area is a temporary move anyway.

Bear in mind that this site is running on VB 3.014 and upgrading to VB4 would be interesting to say the least. However, VB4 is the "no more tables" version of VB - while 3.014 is more the "whats wrong with tables? Nice steady layout" version of VB so the theme you have may not work.

I have no plans to ever upgrade to vbulletin 4. Theres just too much stuff changed under the hood to make it fast and have extra features for me to change it.

Hey, since we are talking about cleaning the site, I do have some Ideas to present



I made it a full workbook and screencapped it. That is my version of the tabs being cleaned up :D

For the Downloads Section

Last edited by levini : 28th May 2012 at 05:57 PM.

I'd like to see something different, but too much. I'm used to it. ^^FYI your siggy is too big.

levini, thanks for the ideas, but I don't quite agree with your download categorising. Who would think to look inside "Programs and Utilities" for a career or a Food item? I don't intend on re-organising the actual sections - just giving the site a makeover.

Oh, Crap, I accidentally put that where Mods were supposed to go :P. Oh, well At least I put my idea out there :D

What you could do is, in addition to the dropdown menu's at the top of the site, you could have one that has all of the forums. And since, in my travels, I have noticed there are quite a few forums, you could have an option in our User Control Panels for what boards we want to see in that menu.
For instance, I'm a creator and downloader mainly, so I could opt to have all Creator Boards, News Boards, and a few Help boards in the menu, as well as the links to The Sims 2 and 3 download home pages and the Wiki in the menu, while someone like Delphy might want the Creator, News, Programs and Utilities, Wiki, and some of the Community boards in their dropdown menu.

Sounds like you want MyMTS, Seabody - hit the button to "Edit favourite forums" to control what shows up there.