webmaster1

Cheers.

D'oh! It's the current time isn't it? I didn't recognize it because of the timezone. Obviously there's a five hour difference between Ireland and whatever timezone you lads fall under.

i.e. the date following:

Cheers, venerated alumni. I thought proxies 'blocked' IP addresses rather than 'substituting' them but going by your suggestion I guess not.

Firstly, SMF is my preference. I've never worked with vbulletin. I am however, a member of a few forums powered by vbulletin. In my experience with SMF, it offers a dandy feature whereby it suggests dual or multiple accounts under the one IP address. Let's say, for whatever reasons, disingenuous or not, one wants to return to a vbulletin powered forum without being identified by way of IP i.e. correlated to previous/existing accounts, how would one go about this?

Not sure if you're leaving the form as it is but to be direct with you it's looking fairly dire and spoiling the rest of your layout. Here's over a dozen examples/tutorials of what a modern form should look like: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2006/11/11/css-based-forms-modern-solutions/ In terms of preloaded image swaps I'd go with this: http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex15/domroll2.htm Not only does it give you a rollover effect, it also gives you a mousedown effect, all of which are preloaded. Have fun styling the forms!

You glossed the panels like a pro, buddy. Well done. The reflections and the drop shadows are looking tasty too.

Hey, the contrast is better. I'd consider trying a white font with a grey stoke and gentle drop shadow. The layout is fine on Chrome. The text of the footer is right aligned. Not sure if it's meant to be centered or not. Have a look at these tutorials to learn how to render your link boxes with a little flair: http://www.ekhoury.com/2007/03/29/glossy-black-panel-with-photoshop/ http://www.zoomcities.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=6564 I use these sites for design inspiration a lot: http://siteinspire.net http://patterntap.com

Good, not just me then. *takes out SMF letterhead paper and begins rant Thank you shitty staff.

Messy on Chrome though to be fair you're already aware of this. The grey font is a bit dull. Try using a stroke, drop-shadow or whatever it takes to create more contrast between the grey text and the grey block behind it. I think the titles should sit on the top of the boxes rather than inside it. I suggest using a mouse-over image swap for the link boxes on the right. Try adding a little gloss or shine to the panels behind the icons.

The previous and next buttons are confusing me. Apologies in advance if this should be really obvious. Does anyone use them and if so, for what?

I have to disagree. This site and it's collective staff is the very and only reason I've been able to self school myself in php to a level where I can build CRM's proficiently or develop themes for Wordpress and SMF. I've got to give to you credit for how funny this is. I haven't laughed so loudly in quite some time.

Ah, I see. I completely disregarded the [more] smilies.

To clarify, I can deduce the difference between the smiley sets alright but as nrg_alpha has elucidated, I'm commenting more on availability of 'php relevant' smilies. Though it's not something I've actually seen in practice (until nrg_alpha's preceding post) here are a few design elements off the top of my head: stereotype: php newb with big anime eyes, batting eyelids with a soother in mouth or licking a lolipop stereotype: php nerd wearing glasses, bucked teeth, side creased hair stereotype: contemporary hacker wearing square glasses, goatee and bluetooth head peace, talking and/or eyes shiftily looking left to right stereotype: php god: white long hair and beard, beard flowing in wind, wise old face stereotype: php dunce: smiley wearing dunce hat with php written on it concept: coding stalemate: smiley with bloodshot eyes, one eye twitching concept: boiling point: smiley screaming in fury and shooting self in head or bashing head with keyboard concept: thanks: a humbled and gracious smiley repeatedly bowing in gratitude concept: pebmac: arrow pointing to profiled smiley sitting on chair facing a monitor concept: using code tags!: smiley being sandwiched between opened and closed code tags concept: do that using server side!: smiley swapping out a sign saying 'client' for 'server' concept: sql/databasing: smiley next to standard databasing icon These are just a few rough examples. At the end of the day it's trivial but nuances like these always stick out in my mind.

How fortunate that we do have an exclusive custom set of smilies then Eh? Apart from the RTFM I honestly couldn't have told the difference. Stylistically I like how they're drawn a lot but they don't intuitively pertain to php a great deal (again, aside from RTFM).

As god-like as this site is it's great to see it aesthetically revamped with a new theme (even if it's not original). It's fresher and more contemporary. I've always thought an exclusive custom set of phpfreak smilies would be nice. The RTFM smiley is amusing.

I have such a bad habit of asking questions here before just trying it out.

Wrapping a div of fixed width around the tborder div seems to do the trick.

I'm editing an SMF theme. I'm changing the width via css from the default fluid to fixed. For arguments sake let's say the width is 1000px. What happens if someone post's an image that is >1000px? Will it distort the entire layout as I suspect and if so is there a workaround?

Never used oscommerce but it's been recommended to me. Make sure you understand what a merchants account before choosing. Here a useful articles to help you decide: http://webtecker.com/2008/04/22/8-best-open-source-shopping-cart-solutions/ The bottom of this article links to an explanation of merchants accounts: http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articles2/shopping-carts.htm Taking the time to read these will save you a fair bit of hassle. Nothing worse than getting half way through a project and realising you should have done it another way.

If you're not stuck for time or at least when you do have the time I strongly recommend the following tutorial (below link). It will show you how to build a Wordpress theme from scratch. The benefit of this is that you'll know how to modify any template. PHP coding isn't required. If anything this tutorial will also teach you some of the basics of WordPress. I've studied and used it with great success. http://www.wpdesigner.com/2007/02/19/so-you-want-to-create-wordpress-themes-huh/ Later gater.

Thanks lads.

I'm looking for opinions on how difficult/straightforward it might be to transfer a forum (smf) from one website to another. Will memberships and posts remain intact? Will there any negatives side effects? I have a site that uses smf and wordpress though in about four to five months it will become part of a parent site that is yet to be created.

I work from Cork, Ireland for example and yet this application: http://www.geoiptool.com/ tells me I'm based in Dublin. Does anything with a little more accuracy exist? And freely of course, because allegedly, like the best things in life, I'm cheap.