I agree. There is not enough skins for b2evolution !!!

Wordpress community is [url=http://www.google.fr/trends?q=b2evolution%2C+wordpress&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0]huge[/url], may be it's the reason.

Also we "lost" some skins between b2evo 1.x and 2.x. I hope it will not be the same between branch 2.x and 3.x

For b2evo v2.x to b2evo v3.x, it will be fine (so far, offline testing).

And I agree, WP's community is huge.

"With a huge community comes a huge spam." As Venom would say.. oh wait, I don't think he ever said that.

:p

(hey, joke only ;) )

once v3.x comes out, the next project for the b2evo community team should be to crank out 10+ skins...

We should have a skin contest or something and the top 3 skins should get some free advertising space on the main page similar to the "Latest Donors" section.

alternatively, we should find the best looking wordpress skins, and donate $$$ for someone to port them to b2evo...

Or now that Francois lives in CA, he can ask some community college to donate some interns for a b2evo skin challenge....

so anyway, we definitely need more skins.

esanchez wrote:

alternatively, we should find the best looking wordpress skins, and donate $$$ for someone to port them to b2evo...

:>

A contest was had once a long time ago, and the idea came up again, but it just didn't happen. Bummer I guess.

Personally when I look at WP skins I see bunches of the same exact thing with a few color changes. I guess that's okay if all you want to do is upload it and use it but I just don't see "original" type stuff. Mostly. Sadly I'm seeing the same thing here anymore.

Oh well eh? I can whine or do something, so I think I'll try to do something. I'm close to going into webwork for a side living, so maybe I'll do up a few skins and slap my "corporate name" on them in the hopes of getting some free advertising ;)

/waits in anticipation

little community :(

Walter wrote:

little community :(

THAT is the number one reason. Some unknown percentage of users contribute something. An unknown percentage of those users keep sharing stuff. So its a numbers game. More users means more stuff, which makes it easier for more people to use the software, which eventually means more stuff.

If only there was some program where users could design a b2evo-specific skin and then share it. For those of us who don't know how to write code but know what looks good and could pick stuff from a drop down list or whatever. :)

hudson2001 wrote:

If only there was some program where users could design a b2evo-specific skin and then share it. For those of us who don't know how to write code but know what looks good and could pick stuff from a drop down list or whatever. :)

There's actually such a program but not for any blog system, these were designed for CMS, especially the *Nuke and Xaraya branches.

I can't remember what it's called, last time I followed *Nuke and Xaraya news was 5 years ago :p I guess the complexity of creating themes for CMS prompted such a third-party tool. Blogs on the other hand are simpler.

How about, design-oriented peeps create a design and graphics, then the HTML coders will code it? I left the designing part almost a decade ago in favor of coding. And I'm not really good when it comes to graphics editing anyway.

That will work. Pooling our resources together ;) You design, including the graphics if any, then we do the dirty part.

I second this motion. creating the color scheme, banner and buttons is super time consuming and some 'wanna-be artists' don't like when i 'borrow' their stuff...

we should create a media repository here @ b2evo and the css/php coders can use that.

so if someone provides the banners and color schemes, font style, i promise I'll give this a shot and create a skin... and sounds like @Laibcoms is on board too (though i'm not volunteering him/her)

Once upon a time I saw something like this for WP. Basically you selected colors for everything after picking a basic structural layout. Eventually it pooped out a style sheet for ya. Or maybe a .php and a .css that worked together I guess given the ability to have differing columns.

I think there is or was a way to do it with phpbb as well. Again, HUGE communities have a couple of "one in a million" people who obsess with a concept until it pops into the world like a ping pong ball pinging and ponging.

Hey doesn't 320 have something like this? Not totally easy but isn't there now a way to tweak colors without having to edit a style sheet?

I have seen CSS editors and such, that will poop out (hee) a basic stylesheet, but can that be edited easily? Of course you'd still have to add graphics and such...

Just spitballing. :)

Hey doesn't 320 have something like this? Not totally easy but isn't there now a way to tweak colors without having to edit a style sheet?

Not only colors, you can hide/display containers or add sidebars, switch style sheets, virtually everything you see in skin may be controlled from that tab :)

The only problem is it's not easy for an average user who doesn't even know how to add a menu link :(

by 320, you mean b2evo 3.2 ?

:yes:

Yeah I'm lazy. 320 or 310 or v3.* when talking the entire generation. Now with 247 out there it sucks cuz I think of it as a slightly different flavor of 246 due to not enough differences to make it worth splitting. So I call it 246/7 ... and typing a slash between numbers is really hard :( I have to move my fingers in awkward and uncomfortable motions :'(

esanchez wrote:

I second this motion. creating the color scheme, banner and buttons is super time consuming and some 'wanna-be artists' don't like when i 'borrow' their stuff...

we should create a media repository here @ b2evo and the css/php coders can use that.

so if someone provides the banners and color schemes, font style, i promise I'll give this a shot and create a skin... and sounds like @Laibcoms is on board too (though i'm not volunteering him/her)

Yeah, that's cool. We need a pool for these graphics stuff, (including prototype designs created in PDF for example, at least to give the coder an idea of what is being requested). Then skinners can pick-up anything they need and just code away.

The problem with theme/skin creators mainly are:
1) If they came from the graphics side, they learn coding as they go along, and usually they do not care about the W3C at all. Just get the layout correct, trash the W3C rules.

OR

2) A good coder have an idea of a skin/theme, then starts to learn how to create graphics. Sometimes (or most of the time??) ending up with a final product that is less than what he originally envisioned.

And both consumes a lot of time because the learning curve is still there for both. Of course there's the #3, good in both :p But it's rare nowadays.

Will b2evo be willing to host the resource pool?
Oh, this is different from converting a theme "to" b2evolution, this is more about producing skins that appears first in b2evolution.

I have been uploading photos to flickr. Most of them are taken with my mobile but quality is pretty good for banners.

feel free to use them as your ease.

If you have your own set of "worry-free" "use at will" media, leave a link.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thechristianalert

i add stuff frequently so check often

Ah yes, license. If possible, for this "pool", could every one please use CC By-SA 3.0 ? ^_^

If enough people have a flickr account we could create a flickr group and all post the photos to it that we are OK with people using.

Just a thought :-)

Laibcoms wrote:

Ah yes, license. If possible, for this "pool", could every one please use CC By-SA 3.0 ? ^_^

Maybe not given that not all nations have a cc license at ccv3.0. A fair number of nations haven't gone that way yet, so one should license their content in a manner appropriate to their physical location.

Anyway http://search.creativecommons.org/ might be of interest to some? For flickr-specific you can use http://www.flickr.com/search/advanced/

I like the idea of a flickr group to pool resources, but to be honest I wouldn't ever use anyone else's photos. Photos are the very first thing I change to make it more personalized. But then again, I probably am not going to be the one designing these. :)

Just thoughts from the peanut gallery. :)

EdB wrote:

Laibcoms wrote:

Ah yes, license. If possible, for this "pool", could every one please use CC By-SA 3.0 ? ^_^

Maybe not given that not all nations have a cc license at ccv3.0. A fair number of nations haven't gone that way yet, so one should license their content in a manner appropriate to their physical location.

Anyway http://search.creativecommons.org/ might be of interest to some? For flickr-specific you can use http://www.flickr.com/search/advanced/

Ah true true. Hmm, any license will be fine I think as long as those who will use it can "freely" use it - by 'free' I mean, any free culture license. ^_^

isn't GPL "any culture" ?

¥

I once got in trouble for using a picture that was listed as ""free"... and later was accused of stealing...

if you search flicker, you'll find it... I think this is because our site is christian and, if you disagree with that worldview, you might not like your art to be used in there... not sure... anyway, I think b2evo skinners will fair better...

¥åßßå wrote:

isn't GPL "any culture" ?

¥

Free Culture or any other term used to refer to the Free Culture movement hehe :p I just use 'Free Culture' as an umbrella term to refer to FLOSS and CCL.

esanchez wrote:

I once got in trouble for using a picture that was listed as ""free"... and later was accused of stealing...

if you search flicker, you'll find it... I think this is because our site is christian and, if you disagree with that worldview, you might not like your art to be used in there... not sure... anyway, I think b2evo skinners will fair better...

Hmm, if they licensed it with any CC license, they don't really have any choice in the matter as long as CCL was followed.

But I think if it's a sensitive issue, might as well remove it instead of making enemies. The last thing we need is to find a new host because some nation started bombing our sites.

Laibcoms wrote:

¥åßßå wrote:

isn't GPL "any culture" ?

¥

Free Culture or any other term used to refer to the Free Culture movement hehe :p I just use 'Free Culture' as an umbrella term to refer to FLOSS and CCL.

Is that a "yes"?

personally you can take pretty much anything and everything that I share with the internet, and do what you like with it .. dunno if there's a licence that covers that in all cultures ;)

¥

I would love more skins but I'm a graphics idiot so I can't exactly bitch. I managed to hack my way through Ed's most awesome Purple Beauty theme and evocamp to merge them into a frankstein type purple mess. That is the extent of my skinning 'talents' LOL