With the upcoming launch of 6.3 your UBB™ will have even greater ease of customization with templates. What better way to celebrate than to have a rip roaring template design contest!

It's the UBBDev Superiffic Template Contest!!!



It's time for the graphics and html gurus to take front stage and show off their baddest and coolest designs.

Here are the rules:

• Entries must be received Wednesday, May 15th
• Voting will consist of both a staff vote and a public vote to be carried out by members.
• After formal review by the UBBDev staff, the top entries will be put to vote in the public forums lasting one week.
• In case of a tie, the tie-breaking vote will be cast by UBBDev Template Diva, Jamin Colley
• All entrants consent to allowing their designs and submissions to be added to UBBDev's database and/or displayed on UBBDev
• You must have a (legit) 6.3 beta board or 6.3 board (once it is final) running, if 6.3 is released prior to the end of the contest, all participants are expected to upgrade their demo board to the full release version, as well as any needed changes in your submission
• Your version must be a clean installation, that means hack free. (You may include code for hacks, provided they are commented out, and properly documented on how to implement.)
• In addition to providing a link to a working board, you must submit a zip file containing your template files to: <a href="mailto:templates@ubbdev.com" target="_blank">templates@ubbdev.com</a>
• You may enter as many times as you want, but remember...we'll be voting on quality, not quantity
• The zip file must contain the following files:
  public_forum_summary.pl, public_forum_page.pl, public_topic_page.pl, public_common.pl and a faq/info file explaining their layout changes
• You are free to make changes to other template files as well, although it is not mandatory
• If you have specific colors you wish to use, then make sure to include the appropriate style template as well
• You must include any custom graphics included in your template design in the zip file.
• UBBDev Moderators and Administrators are welcome to participate, but aren't eligible to receive the grand prize
• ...and best of all, the PRIZE. The winner will get the chance to be a moderator in the templates forum!!! Please note: this means you will have to successfully complete our 30 day moderator boot-camp!
• We reserve the right to modify, change, append, obliterate these rules at any time, as we see fit with or without notice to anyone. If we decide things aren't working out as we planned, we reserve the right to can the whole contest altogether if we so desire...oh, and no hurting pandas, llamas or small woodland creatures.

So sharpen your pencils and get cranking on designing the coolest eye-poppin , killer looking UBB&#8482; we've ever seen.

Ooh! Nice idea! Will this be a monthly contest? Or just a once-in-a-while contest?

~Jon

Idda know... but I plan to enter this one too

Sounds great.

I will enter, but I dunno if I can get it finished by May 15th. We'll see.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by AllenAyres:
Idda know... but I plan to enter this one too </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">are you allowed to do that ?

well since you're the one who makes the rules, I suppose you can ....

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by tackaberry:
...

• UBBDev Moderators and Administrators are welcome to participate, but aren't eligible to receive the grand prize

...</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">

"Your version must be a clean installation, that means hack free. (You may include code for hacks, provided they are commented out, and properly documented on how to implement.)"

im stupid heh explane, that means i can have code hacks as long as they are int he doc correct?

You can put hacks, as long as they're NOT enabled automatically and you provide info on how to enable it.

For example:
# UBB Thinking Clock:
#
#$ThisHTML .= qq~
#<span id="clock"></span>
#~;

And in your text file, say "uncomment lines 50-52 if you want to enable ubb thinking clock".

But it has to be commented by default

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by LK:
You can put hacks, as long as they're NOT enabled automatically and you provide info on how to enable it.

For example:
# UBB Thinking Clock:
#
#$ThisHTML .= qq~
#<span id="clock"></span>
#~;

And in your text file, say "uncomment lines 50-52 if you want to enable ubb thinking clock".

But it has to be commented by default</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">so they can be ont eh active demo, just commented in the doc itself?

The idea is this....

You may have certain hacks installed on your forum.

Someone else might not, but still wants to use that template.

The hack code can be live on your demo, but must be commented out in your submitted code.

This would allow someone the choice of being able to use a hack or not. What we are trying to avoid is having your template code break the board, because a required bit of code cannot be found in another file.

We will be testing submitted entries, and any entry that does not load properly because of extra code that is not properly commented probably won't win.

Note that this contest is being judged on the stylistic values, and not integration of hacks. We're talking html/css tweaks, colors, graphics primarily.

Allen (and the rest of the Staff), bring it on!

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by tackaberry:
The idea is this....

You may have certain hacks installed on your forum.

Someone else might not, but still wants to use that template.

The hack code can be live on your demo, but must be commented out in your submitted code.

This would allow someone the choice of being able to use a hack or not. What we are trying to avoid is having your template code break the board, because a required bit of code cannot be found in another file.

We will be testing submitted entries, and any entry that does not load properly because of extra code that is not properly commented probably won't win.

Note that this contest is being judged on the stylistic values, and not integration of hacks. We're talking html/css tweaks, colors, graphics primarily.

Allen (and the rest of the Staff), bring it on!</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">i just had a few things i needed in the cgi to make the overall work , like my rpg hack, great, cleared it up for me, to editplus i go!

It means that you should not add any new feature, just change the look. So don't include CGI modifications or your RPG hack

We're supposed to doc this? Man this will be one big doc if you want to edit alot. Hmm...

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by LK:
It means that you should not add any new feature, just change the look. So don't include CGI modifications or your RPG hack </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">i shall make it work with templates only then, the rpg hack is key! resistance to it is futile!

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Lord Dexter:
We're supposed to doc this? Man this will be one big doc if you want to edit alot. Hmm...</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Put the PLs, not instructions

I think you need to document: name, your name, and, IF you put other hacks in it (commented), instructions how to uncomment them.

Tacks and participants::

As per Charles' directions in this thread (a little over halfway down the page), public_common.pl should also be included in your template .zip file.

---Jamin

I was coming here to post that very same thing

As Stilgar always says, "Great minds think".

Heh, hope I get time to do this... I'm sure I will.

hehe i hope this comes out good , i got a good ways on it today.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by LK:
Put the PLs, not instructions

I think you need to document: name, your name, and, IF you put other hacks in it (commented), instructions how to uncomment them.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Thats not too bad then. Good luck to everyone.

Name: AllenAyres

Templates: http://ubbdev.com/test/templates.zip

Description: CSS of all public files

Demo: http://www.ubbdev.com/test/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi - Click on the buttons up top

Notes: There are a few buglets I am still working out, but they'll be finished by the time judging comes around

Wow, nice work Allen! It's gotta be a lot of work to CSS all of them!

Thanks, was a good bit of work, but I've been talking about it since 6.1, I figured it was time to go through with it since we've got the xhtml finally done

This should save forums ~10% on their monthly bandwidth charge and make their pages download a bit faster. Hopefully, with a little more work, we can get this to be chooseable in your profile like .threads does

Awesome job AA. Pretty impressive for our first entry, raises the bar for would be challengers.

I hope the rest of you are plugging away!

Demo of Allen's: www.lkubb.dns2go.com/?ubb=forum;f=6 (not straight from the ZIP, it's Allen's + bugs I fixed + my board's hacks)

Good job!

Wow thats great AA. Gonna be hard to beat.

Another demo of Allen's CSS templates: www.ubbdev.com/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi

The edit profile/new registration thingy isn't a part of Allen's CSS template, but it can be used ONLY if using Allen's scheme, unless you want to touch cache routines (such as MyStyle's way).

Where can I download the 'Compact Header' templates being used on this site, the one at the top of this page for example? I'd like one that's v6.3 compatible, yet only UBBDev seems to have it and there's no download.

I beyond compared 6.2 compact headers with 6.3 normal files

We should be able to make them available sometime later this weekend, the ones we have now are css'd, so unless you use those, it'll take a couple days or so before we can get some regular ones out again

should've mentioned this. great job aa.

I look forward to it, thanks AA.

Name: AllenAyres & LK

Templates: http://ubbdev.com/test/ezineTemplates.zip

Description: An "ezine/journal style" template set

Demo: http://www.ubbdev.com/test/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum;f=8;DaysPrune=1000 - Click on the topics too

Notes: This combines the css of above, with compact headers and a unique style that would work well for forums you want to set as personal journals or ezines. There are a few more steps to mod besides just the templates for a finished look, but this gets most of them I'll post the other steps as they are finished - we'll be using something very similar for our ezine here.