GDNet+ members - I'm giving you an early access perk for the site.

I'm not going to announce this beyond the CSI forum because it's still early, but you can access the new theme under development via Change Theme -> GDNet v7.0.

As of this post it is still very early so quite a bit won't look right, but I wanted to open it up because I'm finding myself using it on a daily basis and in that sense it is very usable.

With the next iteration the homepage is changing with new features, but the v7 theme doesn't show it because it's a different URL right now.

Why another iteration on the theme? Didn't the theme just change a few months ago?

• Indeed.
• We have a site upgrade in the works targeting 3-4 months from now. This theme will be the most direct translation to the new site software and reduce the amount of work we need to do with setting up the theme for the upgrade.
• We plan to provide press coverage for GDC this year, which requires us to setup some new site features that require adjusting the homepage. Might as well do that with a better theme framework.
• Better responsiveness. I'll admit it, even with its improvements the v6 theme is still not that great on mobile. v7's goal is to be much, much better.

I'll update this thread with new information as it progresses. Milestone to complete is February 19 with roll out to public shortly after.

Feedback is welcome to this thread. Please don't create new threads until further notice.

Avatar would be better be on the left side with the other member information. Easier to put a face with the name, as it were.

Yeah, some things right now are artifacts of framework changes. Interesting how things work sometimes. It'll be left eventually.

ugh, i accidentally changed my theme to 3.4.1 and can't change it back! :( It's stuck at 3.4.1, and the menu wont come up to allow me to change to 7. The scroll position just jumps to top. To top that off, the 3.4.1 theme has (ugh) ads :( please help!

Edit: Fixed it by clicking back until i had a page in my history using the gdnet 6 theme, and reset it from there. That was a close one. Worth looking into still perhaps?

I have some feedback on the new theme now though. Perhaps there can be a way to hide all the stuff on the right hand side? The right hand stuff kind of takes reading space away from the posts and only extends a fraction of the way down the page for a long thread anyway... I like where it's going though :)

I just reset you to the 6 theme, since I saw your post before the edit and it took me a while to sort out where that control was.

Thanks! :D

not bad, the navigation bar is even sexier now imo. the forum index and posts are shorter however with the left side padding, which i'm not 100% a fan of, as it means a longer page to fit more content:

for example, this post:

v7:

v6:

same for the index:

v7:

v6:

perhaps less left padding might be a good idea?

anyway, that's my initial 2cents atm, i'll explore more and see how other things look.

edit: the frontpage also looks really nice now!

edit2: the user navigation menu in the top right looks much nicer as well, althrough 2 things, one clicking your profile seems to refresh the current page rather than your profile, and 2. having profile and profile(rep pnts) seems redundant since the first one isn't clickable, perhaps just remove the label text altogether?

edit3: seems topics i've created let me have the ability to hide them under moderate tools? not sure if this intentional to give to users.

@slicer4ever

Forums haven't been touched yet (most complicated), but I'm also not sure what will happen with the padding yet. Let's see what happens when the tweaks start hitting the forums. I'll list what's been changed after answering your questions. By early access I probably should have explained it as "you get to watch it evolve".

(edit) Thanks. Excited about the plans for the front page.

(edit2) The profile click is a bug. Not sure why the original link isn't working anymore, but there's a fallback if that can't be figured out when the time comes to address it.

The first "Profile" is actually a header for the section. The plan is to give it a background color so it's more obvious. This part of the menu will also get rearranged and maybe make more sense.. maybe I'll do that before I logout for the day.

(edit3) This has been the case since the new GDNet+ tiers were introduced and the perks were changed.

For everyone, general status:

1. Framework changes (done)

2. Navbar (done, with minor tweaks remaining)

3. Global template (done)

4. Frontpage layout and related blocks (done)

5. *New site feature* (done)

6. Article section

a. Categories browsing (in progress)

b. Article page

c. Article submission form (tbd)

7. Forums

8. Dev Journals

9. Member list

10. Classifieds

11. Miscellaneous