Choosing Colors For Your ProBoard

[filipina4u]

Oct 20, 2006 15:38:29 GMT -8 Ímþ®óvîšâ†ó® said:

myke said:

-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:

This website will help you match your colors:

Here is a skin coloor maker/generator:

Thoughts, comments, questions?

time to bring this thread back to the first page
That's probably the toughest part about skin-making unless you're use to it

My main colour seems to be blue (for some peculiar reason), but I'd rather prefer green since I loved it as my favourite colour.

Also, this is the part most members tend to faulter in when designing their own colour scheme...

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.

True, without some interesting colours, members may not even bother joining, they might just glance at it for 3 minutes (maybe not even that) and just ignore it as if they thought of it to be an annoying ad

Blue, Purple and Black, seemed to have worked for me (as it was my first ever skin too )

I'm yet to figure out a good combination with a green colour scheme (my next skin )

~*Improvisator*~

Yes, me too, i love green... That's why my skin board is green...

[drizzle.]

I've been on many forums where they use bright, too intense colors.

When you begin a proboard, the image that your viewer see's is going to determine whether or not they decide to join. Now, that might not be the case for every viewer, but it definitely affects your forum and its progress/success. Personally, I use a picture to use as the logo and base colors off of that picture.

This site: html-color-codes.com

And this picture: http://i125./p60/jordantaylor1321/Proboard%20Pics/l_b9da98d520fa17ab315c5adbcef7caca.gif

Help me a lot when I design new skins.

Well, personally I think that the color and show of your proboard affects decisions viewers make. It’s not different from the concepts of looks for houses, clothes, food, and etc. If something doesn’t look good in a store, you don’t buy it.
Well, if your proboard has bad colors, or a bad image, people aren’t going to want to spend their time looking at it, or joining it.

Those are my opinions on that.

[♥Elly]

Jul 28, 2006 14:59:26 GMT -8 Frosty225 said:

What helps me with making skins is that I like to start with either the banner or Bg and add on from there. One I get the colors of the Bg or Banner I want, I can start with the hex codes. It's easier than guessing what it would look like and debating weither or not to choose a color becuase I want it to match up. (Hope that helps )

That's what I do. I base most of my images on a skin off the background. I guess I'm lazy! xD

[Storm]

Jan 16, 2009 6:38:51 GMT -8 ♥Elly said:

Jul 28, 2006 14:59:26 GMT -8 Frosty225 said:

What helps me with making skins is that I like to start with either the banner or Bg and add on from there. One I get the colors of the Bg or Banner I want, I can start with the hex codes. It's easier than guessing what it would look like and debating weither or not to choose a color becuase I want it to match up. (Hope that helps )

That's what I do. I base most of my images on a skin off the background. I guess I'm lazy! xD

Hi,

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support.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=promotion&action=display&thread=28689

[sunshine]

Wafja;lwjefalwjf. Oh my goodness. I will admit that I have not read this entire topic, but I had to keyboard-mash a bit at this subject.

Colors for me are a HUGE thing... entire layout design, really, but a huge part of it is the chosen color scheme and making sure all of it sort of goes and matches together and isn't too harsh on the eyes and everything flows. My biggest turn-off to any forum is colors that are too !!!!!!, or messy layouts that have everything everywhere and there's no real flow to it and it's overly busy and.. just, blech. I'm completely OCD about this, and I find that if a forum's layout doesn't appeal to me, I am instantly uninterested in the board itself. I don't know if this is just me, but yes.

Also, anything with black, unless used in moderation and not with any aspects of intense contrast anywhere, is usually a mess. Also, badly tiled backgrounds. Which really doesn't have too much to do with colors, but still. I usually try to pick like, 2-4 colors of the same sort of tone and intensity and play around with those same 2-4 colors; there's nothing I can't stand more than a nice, integrated color scheme and then like, RANDOM NEON YELLOW! or something, haha.

{Though, I realize upon visiting my board that this might sound hypocritical, as I've gotten reports that the links in the middle of our board actually show up neon green for some visitors, but.. I promise that isn't intentional and we're trying to fix it. xD}

[Şħadoώ]

Like many people, I'm not ashamed to admit that I won't join a forum if every time I look at it I want to close my eyes. What people seem to do is pick a few of their favorite colours and think that they match perfectly when the rest of the world doesn't.

A few things I've noticed about forum colours is this. (And it appears to be the magic touch most of the time.)

1. People like black, grey, or blue forum layouts. The darker, the better. Make sure the font is lighter than the rest, though.
2. Not many people like it when the boards and threads high-light when you mouse over them.
3. Tiled backgrounds are generally a big no-no. Make sure the image is either seamless, meant to be tiled, or huge before you use it. Also, fix the image so that it doesn't move when you scroll. It makes it look tidier.
4. As long as your banner and background have colour, no one really cares if your forum is black and grey in other areas. A touch of colour will really do the trick, but no need to go all out.
5. Finally, picking a shade and using two others (one that's two steps darker than the first and one that's three lighter) is practically foolproof for making sure things match and have an order, so long as you do it right.

So, that's my penny's worth of advice, to be taken or leftXD

[Pipamonium]

I will admit that the first thing I do when looking to join a forum is see if I can stomach the colours. If it's even a question I'm out of there. It's incredibly annoying to me to see badly tiled images, even if the colouring matches well. It's even more irritating to be on a forum where the vibes given form the chosen skin don't match the content. I don't want to go to a dark forum when the point of it is to talk about puppies.

I prefer very basic layouts, ones that aren't busy at all. On my forum the background to the windows, as well as the main background, is the same image. The text and border colours are the same. With a splash of different gradient for the title backgrounds, and another for the category background. I encourage my members to post in various colours (but push that they be easily readable) to bring life to their characters.

[Nacku]

Jan 25, 2009 1:50:00 GMT -8 Pipamonium said:

I will admit that the first thing I do when looking to join a forum is see if I can stomach the colours. If it's even a question I'm out of there. It's incredibly annoying to me to see badly tiled images, even if the colouring matches well. It's even more irritating to be on a forum where the vibes given form the chosen skin don't match the content. I don't want to go to a dark forum when the point of it is to talk about puppies.

Excellent points! If the subject matter is light and airy, it shouldn't have a dark tone. If the subject matter is somewhat dark, it should have an equal tone. But you know, looks sometimes deceive.

[PIXIEdust]

I recently revamped my site (link in sig) From a dark drab mix of grays to a white with blue accent. IMO the White offers a much cleaner, and inviting setting, than the dark greys which always seemed so gloomy.

My approach is always deciding on a base color, and making a bg image from there I build my forum colors to match and then make a banner. I like themed skins though, I change my forum's skin every few months to keep it fresh =)

[squngle]

Another helpful site is:

Colourlovers.com

If you click on palletes, you can see different color combinations. Its VERY helpful!!

[woreorcatz]

Colors are really important on a forum. If someone doesn't like
your colors, they don't join. If you try to affiliate with another
forum and they don't like your colors, they either refuse you, or
put your banner somewhere that almost no one can see it.

Even if you have the same color, lets say....yellow for example,

you should have yellows of the same families.

Yellow-orange probably doesn't go GREAT with yellow green.


Your colors should be subtle enough to be relaxing on the eyes.
Also, you need to see the font, so choose wise colors for that too.

[Outsider <3]

I agree with everyone here. Boards should have a good skin to attract attention. I remember advertising on a few out-there boards with intense skin colors and I had gotten a headache. I didn't even finish my advertisement. That's how bad one was.

I love to use blues of the same "families" along with darker colors like grey, black or even navy blue. White is also okay to use, but if you use it on a dark color it burns your eyes. My favorite colors to use are dark blues, greys and blacks, white as a secondary color and all greens {Except Lime-green, too neon!}

I think that your board's skin appearance has a huge impact on your member count! had a bad skin once and nobody joined, I fixed it and people came flooding in!