Over the past 2 weeks , we have developed vbulletin skins for 2 different websites / clients . One for a flower discussion community forum and now currently a Spanish fantasy gaming website . The 2 new templates that have been developed are quite a bit more colorful than before , especially the Spanish forum .

Developing custom templates is naturally costlier than regular templates, because they are uniquely designed for 1 single customer to maintain their individuality . These templates we do not allow for download directly from our website. Among the last 2 clients i was mentioning, one of them provided their own PSD and our work involved converting the Photoshop design into a fully coded vbulletin template , which could be imported on their existing forum , which also used vB CMPS , along with 13 other vbulletin Addons / Plugins / Modifications. The odd thing , however , is that both times the client / customer requested their “unique vbulletin template” to be a clone of a existing forum site design !!

I have been discussing about the legality of doing this design with a few web designer friends of mine and have also posted on webmaster forums . As of yet , people are of the idea that since the liability of the content – design and text copy , is of the owner of the domain , it should not concern me , as the designer. However , as the designer it should be in my best interests to let the customer / site owner know that he is opting towards probable legal hassle. My friend suggested that i get at least a email confirmation , if not in writing , that it is by his idea the design is being cloned . Furthermore, he also suggested that I should not include a link back to my website / portfolio page – proudly claiming that the vbulletin clone design was done by me / us, thus alienating ourselves from any complaints or such.

The site is not yet launched, and I am planning yet another redesign. Yes, I am talking about Phpcafe only.

Reason:

1. I do not want much text in this site , I have way too much text in Websys and Featuredhost website already. I want this one to be block block , see – buy – download kind of look.
2. This current design was my own idea only and i don’t like it much :p. I have seen the new design and i think its going to be much better
3. we now almost have a new logo
4. Wordpress has come out with 2.3 final , so the templates have to be upgraded any way

Hopefully by the time the new design is up, I will be able to start the Downloads section here as well.

Today we recieved a new vbulletin template design and cuztomization work for a entertainment forum . This vbulletin job is 3 folds :

1. design a vbulletin template
2. install vbCMPS
   
3. Install and configure vbSEO as well install vcPics gallery

Both vb CMPS and vbSEO are well known vbulletin products ( not official, of course). CMPS is like many vbulletin CMS softwares – quite widely used and comes with the regular page generation and management features and options for fixed as well as custom blocks , to display several common functions like stats , latest members , latest posts as well as custom advertisement and google adsense blocks .

To be frank , the current work is less about designing a vbulletin template but more about fixing the layout with the vbCMPS and vbSEO installation . I am currently testing the website on a demo folder taking a mysql and web dump from the original site . But I have seen the vbulletin forum design work done by our designer tarak , and i definitely like it – i hope the customer will also . Just to make the customer happy and satisfied , I have asked tarak to provide with 2 different color themes / concepts for the templates one in darker shade and another in lighter color . We are of course making custom graphics , including custom buttons , custom designed header, and the works

Last week we got a work of making a php based gallery website with admin panel . Now , this is a pretty basic work and has been done over and oevr again. However, two new things are involved in this . One , the design is not something we will be doing as it is already done, so when we finish making the gallery , we will have to dress it up with the layout the client has provided.

The second part is something i liked , which is the main customization. As all gallery based sites have the typical admin panel from where the admin can create , manage , edit and delete Categories or albums and Sub Categories . It will not have the option of users uploading photos , as that will only be done by the admin and users will mostly be viewing images and if interested, adding it to their cart of sorts. With every gallery , it is reuired to auto crop images and create thumbnails , and sometimes also a watermark to put the sitesname , thus involving GD.

A somewhat new twist will be , there will be some categories which will not be viewable at all to general visitors . The client wanted to manually generate some kind of password and assign it to them manually to each so that with the password , they would be able to view certain restricted categories . i didnt feel that was a handy solution, so I have suggested that we create user groups and assign the specific categories to specific user groups , thus minimizing the work of assigning passwords and the problems of password sharing .

4images if a extremely cool image gallery software . I have been a fan of 4images , which btw is available from www.4homepages.de and not 4images.com , as you might mistake it if you dont know. I just noticed that I have been using 4images for the past 6 years now . Being an open source software , like many others 4images has its own advantages and some demerits . As a photo gallery software, it is quite versatile and has several end user as well as admin features and options. In the recent versiion which is 4images 1.7.3 i believe, it has captcha and batch resizing inbuilt , which means any image which is uploaded can get cropped and resized as well and there is also option for batch watermarking.

4images also supports integration of user database with various forum database , out of which vBulletin and phpBB comes by default and is supported if i remember. Personally i have managed to keep it integrated with Invisionboard all versions till date now , in my other television forum ( Discusstv). In discusstv I have also succesfully used a modification to make urls seo oriented , using htaccess . But one thing i had found difficult is to leech protect . Other than that , 4images also supports having a gallery of not only images but also Flash files and WMV and different video formats with preview options too .

But all these are common knowledge and may not be of much inetrest to some of you . The good news is I have now started designing 4images templates . You may view a design which i have done here http://www.discusstv.com/gallery/ and another at Sareez.com ( LINK HERE as site is non existant currently ) . But i did that almost 1-2 years back. I have thought of giving away these two templates for free . If i see it gets good response , I will start making more nicer templates for 4images soo. I have already started on a pink colored design. So if you are interested, stay tuned.

Wordpress themes and templates has always been a target . Till now , was mostly busy with Invisionboard and vBulletin skins and templates , and occassionally some other scripts… like phpld and 4images. When i decide to get on any skinning or templating, I always like to read out the official forums of the software , as they contain a huge resource , tips and FAQ’s . But with wordpress, you dont need to go to its support forum , but rather there is a huge repository of articles , all stored in its Wiki , called Codex. However , when checked codex today, it seemed to me some of the design and layout pages on the wiki is little out of date . Nevertheless, it is definitely the best place to start.

Unlike many other softwares or scripts I have worked on before, I really look forward to making wordpress themes . Unlike commercial softwares,  wordpress has a even larger userbase and hence a good market too . vBulletin is a largely popular script , and there are always forums popping up here and there every day . But forums are made by forum admins and the requirements for a forum theme will be probably once every 6 months or 1 year for say 500 users in a forum . But , almost 500 of those individual forum members can have a Blog and thats counting it less .  I can keep talking about how great Wordpress is and why I believe 425 of those  500 members will decide to have a hosted Wordpress instead of some blog host .  But that is not the main reason i am happy too … the main reason is that a Blog is totally a mood oriented site , I have seen Blog owners wanting to have a new look for their blog or at least order or search for various Blog headers many times a year .

Yes, we have already put up the new web design on www.phpcafe.net . The site is yet to be re-launched , but i am still working on it . But i just didn’t want the homepage to continue showing something that is no longer here . But I would rather show something that is going to be here soon ; and that is the PHPCAFE CMS and of course Templates and Designs Customizations for vBulletin , Invisionboard and OsCommerce.

The current phpcafe design should be much more trendier than before , although the pages are yet to be complete , but i just needed to have them up , as it has been long due .

Here’s a screeny for those reading the blog

Today i also submitted this blog to a blog directory called Blog Catalog.

OK, we have now completed the matrix skin , for MW client. Here’s a preview of the skin , however this is a screenshot of a beta stage , do view the finished skin / vbulletin template in the Portfolio page . It was a pleasure working for John and his team / site. And i daresay they are also very much pleased by our work . His last reply , I quote,

Arindra, both me and my team have gone through the template and we are happy to say it is perfect !

Here is the screenshot .

OK , last few days has been a little slow again , thanks to political distrubances in our city / state . It is making everyone sick , how the idiots at the helm of our government along with its opposition continue to destroy the work culture / environment and everything that looks promising for us down here. Anyway, i will keep ranting about it , if allowed , so on to the main news.

We have sent John and his team of fraud watchers to approve and comment on our latest design sample for their vbulletin forum . Personally i believe it is yet just 25% made and hope we can do much more work on it , but lets wait for their feedback first .

On the other hand , we have almost completed a Invisionboard skin , for IP.Board 2.2 . I intend to distribute it for free since the topic / theme is pretty current and generic . The buttons are nice , with a full set of graphics, it should look much nicer . However , what i do like about it is the Stats section which we have modified . Sometime tomorow i will put up a screenshot here , but I do wish we had finished making it before the World Cup 2007 started .

Ever since i did some restructuring on the featuredhost website and its new pages, i have noticed a substantial gain in search engine rankings for the term vBulletin templates. Considering this as a heavily searched term, i was actually quite surprised to say the least for such an interesting gain in so little time. When i showed the same to our team, they were very enthusiastic about working on vBulletin and forum templating in general.

However the initial few days did not bring us any client but the forms / request a quote forms on the same pages got heavily attacked by Spam Bots. Even though we have a captcha solution, on some other forms, i decided against putting such a security measure on this in spite of receiving extensive spam , which gave us nothing but false hopes of receiving request for quotes.

But that was those days and today is now. In the past 2 days , we received 2 new queries for doing custom vB templates design. One such work has already been confirmed by the client and agreement already signed. From Monday , we start work for this German client, who was quite nice to chat with. Once again this requires working on another gaming site. We are only starting by doing a vB template but it promises to lead to more interesting vBulletin CMS development as well . Needless to say , i am pretty excited and geared up .

As for the other client, he has requested few testimonials , so am awaiting the confirmation from previous clients to know if they will allow us to use their testimonials . One client has already agreed and I am quite thankful to him . Hopefully by next week , we should have started work on both the new template designs.