# Feedback on my bulletin board theme

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/feedback-on-my-bulletin-board-theme/241599
**Category:** Community Building
**Created:** [October 11, 2022, 4:55pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/feedback-on-my-bulletin-board-theme/241599 "2022-10-11T16:55:20Z")
**Posts on this page:** 14
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![manuel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/manuel/32/468169_2.png) [@manuel](https://meta.discourse.org/u/manuel)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2022, 4:55pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/feedback-on-my-bulletin-board-theme/241599/1 "2022-10-11T16:55:20Z")

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Hey guys, I did a simple theme that uses the new sidebar. It’s a modern play on old-school bulletin boards. It also aims to be dead simple to use:

 ![Screenshot from 2022-10-11 17-27-38](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/b/f/b/bfb452b2af57f36d93420eaf0b0462fb757f6d9a.png)

 ![Screenshot from 2022-10-11 17-27-10](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/7/f/2/7f2bfa9eaf5c52d0cda111f6fa39870476f8b803.png)

I’ve only worked on desktop styles so far. I also don’t plan to publish the theme before the sidebar is out of it’s experimental state. Otherwise styles break all the time.

But it would be great to get some feedback already while it’s in the works. If you feel like, you could also sign up, play around and post on the live instance ✨ 🙏

[https://cb.nolosabes.com](https://cb.nolosabes.com)

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### Author: ![piffy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/piffy/32/254198_2.png) [@piffy](https://meta.discourse.org/u/piffy)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2022, 6:16pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/feedback-on-my-bulletin-board-theme/241599/2 "2022-10-11T18:16:36Z")

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It’s very clean. Many of my users do not appreciate the "modern"ness of discourse so I thought about doing a more classical looking theme like this. I guess my next recommendation if you want to really embrace the old-school look is to scale up the avatar size on posts and adjust their position (xenforo shown as example)

 ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/e/8/6/e86016b9a51cb095e3c2f4a7613dd39879c01e79.png)

Might be a decent amount of work since you’ll probably have to adjust the horizontal positions of everything to accommodate the extra width. Just speaking out loud here, obviously it’s up to you on how you want the theme to look. But this is something I will eventually experiment with myself

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### Author: ![awesomerobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/awesomerobot/32/142900_2.png) [@awesomerobot](https://meta.discourse.org/u/awesomerobot)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2022, 9:15pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/feedback-on-my-bulletin-board-theme/241599/3 "2022-10-11T21:15:24Z")

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Love the simplicity, personally I’d want it to be even more simple and eliminate the breadcrumb nav entirely (but I could also see how that might be too much).

I’d also prioritize categories/tags above users/about/faq (assuming categories/tags would be used more often).

 ![Screen Shot 2022-10-11 at 5.08.51 PM](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/d/a/1/da1badefd149cc0369a5662062276218b518a3a7.png)

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### Author: ![manuel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/manuel/32/468169_2.png) [@manuel](https://meta.discourse.org/u/manuel)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2022, 11:08am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/feedback-on-my-bulletin-board-theme/241599/4 "2022-10-12T11:08:38Z")

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> [@piffy](#):
>
> It’s very clean

Yes, it’s also meant more as a template offering the structural layout but no custom styles yet. So when used on an actual instance I’d imagine a less clean look.

> [@piffy](#):
>
> But this is something I will eventually experiment with myself

I want to keep it all simple with this one. But curious to see that! From my experience re-designing the topic stream you’re up for some CSS acrobatics to adjust the look in that direction. Or would you try using a custom template?

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### Author: ![manuel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/manuel/32/468169_2.png) [@manuel](https://meta.discourse.org/u/manuel)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2022, 11:14am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/feedback-on-my-bulletin-board-theme/241599/5 "2022-10-12T11:14:10Z")

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> [@awesomerobot](#):
>
> Love the simplicity, personally I’d want it to be even more simple

Thanks for the feedback, Kris! My original idea was having a breadcrumb indicator on every page. But yes, I think I’ll rather try to make it quite radically simple 🙂

Maybe I’ll go all the way for a pinboard style and only offer tags for content structure. Then drop categories or recast them for group-restricted content only.

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### Author: ![awesomerobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/awesomerobot/32/142900_2.png) [@awesomerobot](https://meta.discourse.org/u/awesomerobot)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2022, 3:02pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/feedback-on-my-bulletin-board-theme/241599/6 "2022-10-12T15:02:59Z")

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> [@manuel](#):
>
> Maybe I’ll go all the way for a pinboard style and only offer tags for content structure. Then drop categories or recast them for group-restricted content only.

I’d definitely be interested in seeing that! I had started a simple tag-only theme last year but never ended up releasing it because it had a few issues (which I think the sidebar now solves!)

 ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/d/0/7/d07e4587957de61fe429abe4555e19317f972e97.png)

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### Author: ![Decorbuz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/decorbuz/32/235124_2.png) [@Decorbuz](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Decorbuz)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2022, 1:41am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/feedback-on-my-bulletin-board-theme/241599/7 "2022-10-13T01:41:41Z")

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> [@manuel](#):
>
> I also don’t plan to publish the theme before the sidebar is out of it’s experimental state. Otherwise styles break all the time.

Ah, that’s unfortunate. I’m in love with the modifications you’ve made with the sidebar! 😍

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### Author: ![AndyBr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ce73a5/32.png) [@AndyBr](https://meta.discourse.org/u/AndyBr)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2023, 6:56pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/feedback-on-my-bulletin-board-theme/241599/8 "2023-02-23T18:56:23Z")

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Is this theme available somewhere?

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### Author: ![manuel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/manuel/32/468169_2.png) [@manuel](https://meta.discourse.org/u/manuel)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2023, 10:07pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/feedback-on-my-bulletin-board-theme/241599/9 "2023-02-23T22:07:56Z")

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yes, I shared it recently:

> [@Pinboard, a simple UI theme](https://meta.discourse.org/t/pinboard-a-simple-ui-theme/252446):
>
> dizzySummary Pinboard is a theme with a simple user interface. It goes well with a flat taxonomy, like a plain list of categories or tags.hammer_and_wrenchRepository [GitHub - nolosb/discourse-theme-pinboard · GitHub](https://github.com/nolosb/discourse-theme-pinboard)open_bookNew to Discourse Themes? [Beginner’s guide to using Discourse Themes](https://meta.discourse.org/t/beginners-guide-to-using-discourse-themes/91966) Install this theme woman_factory_worker:t5 Post install setup The theme installs a few additional components. Some ne…

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### Author: ![AndyBr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ce73a5/32.png) [@AndyBr](https://meta.discourse.org/u/AndyBr)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2023, 4:54pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/feedback-on-my-bulletin-board-theme/241599/10 "2023-02-25T16:54:57Z")

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TY, but it looks almost the same as my current theme. Doesn’t really look like the “Community” theme you showed earlier.  
I’m dying for a BBS style theme that looks like vBulletin or Xenforo.

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### Author: ![manuel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/manuel/32/468169_2.png) [@manuel](https://meta.discourse.org/u/manuel)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2023, 5:26pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/feedback-on-my-bulletin-board-theme/241599/11 "2023-02-25T17:26:00Z")

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Well it’s a 100% the same theme shared here and on the other topic. Not sure what look you are after, but it if you want the setup with separate panels you need to combine it with the Showcase component, as explained on the theme topic.

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### Author: ![P2W](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/p2w/32/304345_2.png) [@P2W](https://meta.discourse.org/u/P2W)
#### Post date: [February 25, 2023, 9:44pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/feedback-on-my-bulletin-board-theme/241599/12 "2023-02-25T21:44:03Z")

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I imported it to my forum. Big fan, nice work.

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### Author: ![P2W](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/p2w/32/304345_2.png) [@P2W](https://meta.discourse.org/u/P2W)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2023, 5:17pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/feedback-on-my-bulletin-board-theme/241599/13 "2023-02-26T17:17:14Z")

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Anything you can do to fix this on mobile? Theme is just fine on web and mobile if this is fixed. See the alignment of the new topic button.

Shouldn’t it be on the far right?

 ![image](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/0/8/9/0898e33a243e14effa7ac8cfa0170b224eb257c3.jpeg)

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### Author: ![manuel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/manuel/32/468169_2.png) [@manuel](https://meta.discourse.org/u/manuel)
#### Post date: [February 27, 2023, 12:15pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/feedback-on-my-bulletin-board-theme/241599/14 "2023-02-27T12:15:08Z")

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Thanks for the feedback!

As far as I can see there’s no code on the theme that would change default behavior here. Posted a brief report in bugs: [Navigation controls align left for mobile admin view](https://meta.discourse.org/t/navigation-controls-align-left-for-mobile-admin-view/256375)
