Ok – before anyone pelts me with tomatoes I wanted to make an observation about Simple:Press which I feel in my humble, humble opinion would benefit it’s appeal to people who might be on the edge of getting it.
Simply put – create at least one default theme which is similar in style to phpBB’s baseline theme (I picked that solely on the basis I like that one the most of the bb themes out there) *or* something which incorporates the phpBB theme philosophy. There, I said it, I don’t mean any offense! Here’s what I see if you allow me to explain my thoughts:
- Simple:Press doesn’t seem to have even one default theme which I would categorize as ‘compact’ (perhaps even ‘slick’). This is a matter of grand opinion I know but most of the forums I go to do not, in fact, look anything like Simple:Press’ default themes. I’m not saying that’s good or bad per-se but it does start to level out expectations for a crowd of admins who are looking at “standard” forum solutions.
- Simple:Press’ look seems “big” or “spacey”. By that I mean the themes takes up a lot of space. The way Simple:Press formats posts in the topic view is nearly 1.5x as tall horizontally as either vBulletin or phpBB’s defaults. The spacing, formatting and icons for the default themes are sorta generous across the board and lend a sense of a “large print for hard of seeing people” look to the thing. (just look at the phpBB support forums as a comparison)
- I know we can “roll our own” but it would seem a nice idea to say to possible customers ‘Hey, check out the variety you can get.’ with an actual example and not just say “roll your own”.
- I also understand ‘different strokes for different folks’ and maybe you are already responding to what you consider a far flung need and don’t see a merit in this.
A lot of my current posts are about me adding little formatting touches to my Simple:Press forum to make is sleeker and trim down its visual footprint. I know it’s a personal thing for me but I might guess there are people out there who think like me. Simple:Press is in a unique situation to storm the market of WordPress forums since it already integrates so well. When I hear you guys have been doing this over five years and all the potential is there I really have to ask why this isn’t bigger right now. At first glance I was not too hot on Simple:Press and only upon diving in and seeing I could basically make what I want did I think “OK – cool”. Problem is most people won’t do what I’m doing and want turnkey solutions.
I dunno – I’m kinda rambling and I’m sure you’ve heard it before. I would say though, being and artist by trade for many, many years I do look at things from an aesthetic view. I am more than willing to work on a theme like the one I am describing and make it a publicly available for the team and all. The deal is the artist part. I’m not a php or css technician and that right there slows me down on several fronts.
OK – long story over! haha
-Max
