Choosing Colors For Your ProBoard

[Azure Swallowtail]

My board was hard to pick colours for, as there was no real theme to match colours with. That's why I spent hours experimenting with colours, and at last found some that I liked.

I find that you can never go wrong with black for a background, as long as you have a light font colour. White is always best with black.

And yes, this has been said before, but blinding colours are a HUGE no-no. I joined this one site my friend made, and I was blinded every time I went on. That's why I asked her to make it less blinding so I wouldn't get a headache and logout earlier.

Another thing I discovered a while ago is to pick colours and background images that won't make the user embarrassed. What I mean is if you've got some weird image in the background, or a blinding colour, and one of your members is on and people nearby notice and wonder, What the flip kind of site are they on? This will make the member not want to go on it often, especially if made fun of for it.
It is better to have colours that will make people nearby think, What site is that? It looks cool, I want to check it out.

Of course, this doesn't matter when the member is on with no body around, but if they are on in a public area, then it matters.

[--Ven]

-Colors-

Colors are one of the most important aspects of the visual side of a forum. Good and bad colors can be the main thing that determines if one is going to stick around and explore the rest of the forum or not.

For example, if you forum's colors are hard on the eyes, and really hard to look at, no one will likely stick around and explore the content of your forum. Would you spend any length of time exploring, then register to this forum?

badcolors.proboards46.com/index.cgi

I seriously doubt it. That forum is not easy on the eyes at all (almost blinding), the text and links are extremely hard to see, which makes navigation a real task, as opposed to being a relaxing place to visit. The colors are just thrown together, and there is no real balance to them, no real flow of colors.

A lot of the time people focus too hard on their custom graphics, and ignore their colors. The appearance of the forum suffers as a result.

Another mistake that is commonly made, is not having enough color. I've seen some forums that are all one shade of Grey, with black text, and link colors. While that may be very easy on the eyes, the lack of color variety and color balance may be off putting to many people, who may have otherwise hung around to give the forum a chance had the colors been nice.


It is important to have colors that are easy on the eyes, match-up well, flow together nicely, have some variety, and overall match the theme of your forum.

That last part "match the theme of your forum", that is very important. A lot of times I see otherwise nice looking forums, but their colors (while nice looking) would match almost anything except the theme of their specific forum.

Red and Green wouldn't necessarily resemble a Harry Potter forum, but may resemble a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Forum.

Dark greens would be perfect for a Halo forum, but wouldn't go well for a Chicago Bulls forum.

So when designing your forum's colors, try to make sure that the color scheme meets all of the positive requirements above (easy on the eyes, flows well together, matches-up nicely) and make sure the that colors matches the subject theme of your board, if there is a specific subject theme.

There is no magic formula for colors, no magical hex numbers. To make a beautiful color scheme takes a lot of work, a lot of patience, and a lot of experimentation. I never said it was easy, but it isn't as hard as some thinks, and is a very important part of your forum.

These following websites will help with choosing colors:

colors.mrfrufru.com/
html-color-codes.com/
eies.njit.edu/~kevin/rgb.txt.html


This website will help you match your colors:

www.hypergurl.com/colormatch.php
www.december.com/html/spec/color3.html


Here is a skin coloor maker/generator:

www.solidsnakedesigns.com/index.php?page=generators



Thoughts, comments, questions?

Exactly. Colors and schemes can make or break a forum. They are one of the most important things of a forum. I personally know I have turned down many sites for their colors and colors alone. How many other people do you think do that too? A lot of the times, you can tell the quality of the board just by it's colors. That's all I have to say on the matter.

[Desdemona Dreadful]

Thank you so much for those sites. I struggle so much not to use gray on varying gray and I sound stupid even saying. I should be afraid to use some color but it's scary to think of how someone will judge my site based on what I pick.

[DEAD~X|]

I suck at making colors for my board but all I do is just pick colors that match my background pictures in the back. Its simple for me.

[Gylfie107]

Combos are my answear. While they are interesting, they are easy on the eyes and easy to read. You also shouldn't use any more then a hair of bright colors, as it's hard on the eyes. And if you can't read it, then whats the point in writing it?

[Michelangelo "Spike" Scarlatti]

I like using dark backgrounds alot
mainly black with the the text and link colors I use something that sticks out a bit
I also like to use backgrounds with pictures or some sort of design to them and I use color schemer studio to help with the colors on my board
it has a photo schemer that shows the colors of the picture that your using for the background which I really find helpful

[Remarque]

Not only are good colors important, but the colors have to match your forum.
I have a writing/fantasy RP forum, so of course I picked a parchment/natural color. If I had picked, say, a pink-and-grey color scheme, it wouldn't have worked as well.

I've noticed that it's a lot easier to make a nice-looking forum using very similair colors, and pastel ones.

A common 'cheat' is to have a forum where the main color is grey, and then have accents in another color. This works for some forums, but after a while it's just sad.

Here's another link to something I find very useful - I didn't use it to make my forum's skin (I'm lazy) but I've made other skins with it - www.2createawebsite.com/build/hex-colors.html

It also has a color scheme generator on the same page. I find it helps :-)

[Lil' Ninja Wolf]

I usually try to use a light or contrasting color for the boards if I use a dark background. Or I pick up on a color in the background image. I find that using an image instead of just a plain color makes it more interesting and memorable. It's really frustrating when you can't read the links if the color starts out good, but then the color changes to a bad one when you've clicked on it. It hampers navigation. If the colors are just right, people get glued to your site. Which is a good thing.

[Mazzeh.]

Jul 3, 2008 7:38:11 GMT -8 Remarque said:

Not only are good colors important, but the colors have to match your forum.
I have a writing/fantasy RP forum, so of course I picked a parchment/natural color. If I had picked, say, a pink-and-grey color scheme, it wouldn't have worked as well.

I've noticed that it's a lot easier to make a nice-looking forum using very similair colors, and pastel ones.

A common 'cheat' is to have a forum where the main color is grey, and then have accents in another color. This works for some forums, but after a while it's just sad.

Here's another link to something I find very useful - I didn't use it to make my forum's skin (I'm lazy) but I've made other skins with it - www.2createawebsite.com/build/hex-colors.html

It also has a color scheme generator on the same page. I find it helps :-)

thanks for that link, man. I hate making up color schemes. this site makes it loads easier... and as for the topic, i so agree. the first thing i judge on a forum is it's scheme. too bright, too dark, etc. it's sometimes difficult to find a happy medium.

[smithjohn]

Choosing Colors for you proboard means that what type of background can be used while creating a web page as in my opinion it company is having logo then the background should match with the logo
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[Meddles-with-Mortals]

I must say, personally I find the best way to get colors for your skin is use the eye drop tool on the logo to find colors that match up precisely. This makes sure that the colors don't clash too badly with the background, and if the colors don't work together, the graphic's probably not to good itself.

Of course, you have to make sure the background color has a huge contrast with the text. I find that plain old black or white text normally works best, depending on whether the background is more light or dark, obviously. People might have trouble reading bright red text.

Also, repeating colors as much as possible help too. Having very similar window backgrounds and border colors matching with links or text help too.

That's just sort of the methodology I use on skins. It works pretty well, I think.

[ChaoguyDX]

Apparently I'm in a situation.

My new site, I want it to look like a building, err, castle, but I'm afraid of your grey, situation. I 100 percent agree about your color importance thing, I've had many many people beg for help with their site because of no members, and they had one two things in common.

• No set forum width (The only skin that looks decent with no set one is PB default)
  
• Bad Colors
  

Help?

[Meddles-with-Mortals]

Nov 1, 2008 10:57:37 GMT -8 ChaoguyDX said:

My new site, I want it to look like a building, err, castle, but I'm afraid of your grey, situation.

Help?

Well... Most pictures of buildings do have backgrounds of some sorts. You could try and add a bit of the green as highlights, maybe the sky blue in the category bars, etc. Or you could try finding a good background that goes with it and use that as a template. It shouldn't be extremely hard to avoid gray, hopefully.

[ChaoguyDX]

I managed to.

I looked up the word "temple" in google image search.

I found a nice brown, I used a tool to to find nice colors for it [gray does match with it], so now gray is the main color, there is a grass background (Tiny chao garden imagine that!) The light browns are the title and category backgrounds.

I'm going to implement the sky blue in my site's banner.

[Former Member]

I personally think that a forum should have colors that are decent.. which doesn't disturb the eyes. It should look good not only to the admin but also to the visitors/members. Colors should also have a flow and while scrolling.. the eyes should be at ease. Also, the forum skins should be chosen according to the type of the forum, just as kamelx said.