CMS Made Simple Forums

Just out of curiosity i wonder why Forum Post content has such a huge font. looking at stylesheet font was reset to 62,5% resulting in 10px, post part to 1.3em, that would result in 13px if i am not wrong.

Also if all the rest of the cmsmadesimple.org is using Arial as default font, why in Forum "Lucida Grande" is used? Edit:
Oh ok lower in stylesheet body style was reset again to 75% font size that would result in 12px, then .postbody and textarea is set to 1.3em that results in 16px and a line-height of 21?

I like the new format (subsilver2).. the only issue that I see is the large gap between each forum on the main forum list. Extra padding after the text.

Us olden ones like it like this ...

For me, the "Lucida Grande" is almost unreadable. Characters are too crushed and unclear.

(browser: Firefox 3.6.13;
video card: Asus AH3650;
monitor: LG L226WTQ)

Dr.CSS wrote:Us olden ones like it like this ...

Maybe glasses could help you, dr!

I think the forum font is way to big. It was never this big, I have never read anything about people having difficulty reading the old SMF forum or the standard phpBB template.

Most modern browsers allow you to change font size on the fly by pressing CTRL and scrolling the mouse wheel.
If I use this function to make the font in the post smaller and I go to write a reply, I can't read anything anymore, cause now everything is too small.

Why is it that the font inside a forum post should be this big and everything else on this forum is in normal font sizes?
What's wrong with the font size used in this message?

Maybe it would help if the text color was a little bit darker, give it more contrast?


I do like the new design and love the fact the forum is incorporated with the main site again. Almost looks like the old SMF forum.

Couple of things though: the 'solved' button has disappeared. Also, when you have visited a topic, the color of the link turns to#5493B4, but if you press any other links in the forum it turns to black. I think the light blue color suits the design way better.
And a last note: I really do not understand why, on a forum about making website's, the link to our websites got removed from the forum posts. I thought we had a pretty good spam-control now.

I correct myself: it seems that it's not Lucida Grande that makes me problems but Helvetica..

nervino wrote:I correct myself: it seems that it's not Lucida Grande that makes me problems but Helvetica..

Well that is because you do not have Lucida Grande and Trebuchet MS on your computer, assuming you are on a MAC, and the problem with Helvetica is that Helvetica should never be used for website fonts (was made for Print), if you want to use Helvetica go for Helvetica Neue.

M@rtijn wrote:What's wrong with the font size used in this message?

Agree.

My opinion is, that for a community portal with CI guidelines (see: http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/downloads/marketing/) you should use and work with what CI says and website/portal should have a recognizable and same appearance on each page.
The move to other fonts and colors in Forum is exactly what i preach to my clients to no to do "please do not use other fonts, than those that were predefined in screendesign or your site will look like a parrot"

Well, time for me to chime in on this subject:

I really have no preference on the font choice.. doesn't matter to me in any way, as long as it's clear and easy to see. I am using a stock kubuntu system with firefox/chrome at 1920x1000 (or something) resolution, and the font itself is fine. I tend to agree that the font should be uniform across all pages, that would certainly be nice, but is not a huge priority given our time and personell constraints.

The natural font size is already too small for me, and I have to zoom it in anyways. Probably 90% of the people that aren't half blind have to do the same thing. This is purely a preference matter. And our resident 'accessibility expert' hasn't complained one bit about the font size, so lets call the font size issue a 'tie'.

Regarding advertising and spam...

The dev team decided to not allow commercial advertising AT ALL in the forum. Not including obvious porn, virility drug, and knock-off-name-brand shoe spam. We have had idiots that use keyword stuffing in their signatures or placing links to porn sites, or selling their own commercial web development services, or their own 'get $1000,000 per month working online' pages, or their affiliate links to somebody else's hosting service. There are a thousand ways that people try to use a free registration site to get free advertising. and We'll have none of it.

Additionally, CMSMS has a few co-marketing partnership arrangements with some parties, and we are actively working on getting more. These partnerships help reduce our out of pocket costs. Allowing members to advertise their "web hosting/web development/seo/social networking/programming/marketing/teaching/...' services" on this site could easily be a conflict with those partnerships. So rather than having to go through everybody's signature, and everybody's website links, to analyze whether the advertisement is a conflict to our current or potential partners, is in bad taste, is not offensive, is not just keyword spam for some relay site, etc. we have just made a blanket policy that advertising from your profile is not permitted. However, if you are interested in pursuing a co-marketing partnership, or in purchasing advertising with CMSMS we would be happy to hear from you.

Additionally, the development team has on more than one occasion received complaints about spam links, keyword stuffing links, links from our site that are offensive to others, etc. We've also received complaints about our recommending 'some company' that was theoretically advertised on our site... when in actuality it was just somebody who had inserted numerous keywords links into their forum signature. That's a hassle we want to minimize for us, and for everybody else. As with alot of things in life, the poor behavior of a few idiots can spoil a good thing for the well behaved majority.

We get about ~200,000 visits per month to our websites. And because of that we get alot of spammers trying to use the site in any way possible. We have created numerous forum policy rules as a result of the spam, changed the forum software, added more mods, instituted the 10 post rule, and more to reduce the spam so that everybody here has a decent experience, and the signal to noise ratio stays as high as possible. Even more changes are coming (as soon as we get time) to try to keep this spam down to a dull roar.

All of these decisions are aimed at keeping the forum clean and easy to use. Keeping it friendly, and keeping the signal to noise ratio high so that people can get help and communicate their ideas. And also at attempting to minimize the amount of time needed for 'babysitting' so that we can do the things we like to do, like program and develop sites, etc. There are thousands of ways that a developer can market their services, this doesn't have to be one of them.

Hope this now makes a bit more sense.

calguy1000 wrote:There are thousands of ways that a developer can market their services, this doesn't have to be one of them.

I understand most of it, but it could mean it is less fun for people to help others