User Submitted Skins

[FakeNameHere]

Imagine if BattleForums allows users to submit their own fully skinned style set. Of course, there are 2 ways to allow the skin set to use; by having users vote, or have the style set go through a very strong and hard process of elemination by user voted mods. So who's with me? Cmon, not everybody likes the skins by just 1 person.

 

[x42bn6]

That would be nice, I suppose.

Here's one I'm still tinkering with.

http://www.geocities.com/arntrabu/myskin.html

 

[FakeNameHere]

This is what battleforums needs, something thats creative, for the people, by the people. I like the high-tech look, try adding some kind of holographic image to it.

 

[Jason]

Talk to Akule, he has a skinning team..and damn has he made some seksi ones ..

 

[x42bn6]

I'm trying, but I didn't have PS7 on the computer I did that on.

I'm trying to make it as simple as possible instead of killing everyone's connection, and keep the server's access for the skin as little as possible. As BMPs, they're tiny in file size. As JPGs, they'll cause barely any time to load.

 

[SpiritSkater]

i think fake is on to something that could turn out ****ing awesome

 

[Sicloan]

well... the reason we DONT have custom skins (besides the new, slight modded ones) is because they are not our forums to mess with. and with as many people as we get here each day, it would REALLY lag up the server. Instead of sending just the table and database files, it would also have to send the images over and over. more than 10,000 people a day request this page... think how bad that would lag it up. So the problem here is money. If we had a fast enough server, which a t3 connection, im sure we could customise the forums more than we have been. but other than that, i dont see it coming any time soon.

One thought i have, to lower the load on the server, would be to have specific image servers for each skin set. their primary function would be the images, and possible all those old threads that hardly anyone ever looks at. but that would also cost alot of money, something which BF does not have since we are a free gaming forum.

 

[x42bn6]

How about if we loaded it onto Angelfire?

 

[Crookedfoot]

As Sicloan put it, we do have some limitations to what we can do for now.
Chris has promised to try a fresh install to see if that will help, but I have no idea of what his schedule is.

But I would truly love the idea of getting a few skins in that are member made.
Wether they are based for a specific forum, or just memebr selectable.

I proposed to Akule to set up a skinning team, but he hasn't gone very far with it yet.
Get up a good idea and get some member backing and maybe we can sneak in a skin, server load be damned.
If you can't get hold of Akule get hold of me, I'll help as much as I can, just keep in mind my coding skills are a bit limited.