Best places to order custom vbulletin forum skin

[roosevelt]

Hello everyone,
I am planning to hire a designer and do a custom skin job for my new vbulletin forum. I bought a skin from extremepixels... and converted it to vBulletin from IPB because I didn't want to buy a vbulletin version of this skin again. Anyways, I am looking for a superb, eye catching... you know some ass kicking commercial design company who designs custom made templates for vbulletin skins. But couldn't find any... . I wanted to give the task to a designer from extremepixels but on the contact form it says they are busy with their own projects so won't be able to take orders. So, can you guys give me some good vbulletin forum skin design sites... excluding:

- www.vbulletin.org
- Some freelance type of sites.

Actually I am not sure about vbulletin.org, because there really isn't any posts about custom designs, and there isn't really a good example of a skin by any author.... so I might be wasting my money for a silly design.

[Jose Amaral Rego]

ask for Floris

https://www.vbulletin.nl

https://www.daniweb.com

[ManagerJosh]

Ask Rick Pierce from Alturasforums

www.alturasforums.com

http://alturasforums.com/pierce/



He did SimStuff.com for me and a secret layout that I'm polishing up for WorldSims

[ChrisLM2001]

There's not many due to the nature of vBulletin's template system. The work load to make a custom style will cause any forum designer to have a...

[Sorry I'm too busy at the moment to take new projects].

Just making a custom navbar requires hours of hunting and pecking to get it right in various browsers, and then you can't even get it to align correctly as the tricks web designers use to do it, isn't available in vB. Plus not many folks are willing to pay the real price for customization work -- they want a $500 skin for $25 (if not free). Forum designers simply won't slave over all that code for nothing.

So if you do find anyone doing custom work (like rearranging the tables and elements), don't expect to get it in 2 weeks or less, or get one made for $25, you won't get any takers (well credible ones that's not around to add some backdoor into your own forum).

Chris
[Who is saying: help vBulletin and ask for design help on the forums, not in PMs]

[roosevelt]

There's not many due to the nature of vBulletin's template system. The work load to make a custom style will cause any forum designer to have a...

[Sorry I'm too busy at the moment to take new projects].

Just making a custom navbar requires hours of hunting and pecking to get it right in various browsers, and then you can't even get it to align correctly as the tricks web designers use to do it, isn't available in vB. Plus not many folks are willing to pay the real price for customization work -- they want a $500 skin for $25 (if not free). Forum designers simply won't slave over all that code for nothing.

So if you do find anyone doing custom work (like rearranging the tables and elements), don't expect to get it in 2 weeks or less, or get one made for $25, you won't get any takers (well credible ones that's not around to add some backdoor into your own forum).

Chris
[Who is saying: help vBulletin and ask for design help on the forums, not in PMs]

I see what you mean. vBulletin is indeed very powerful but when it comes to skinning... it takes ages to get things right. However I am not planning to pay $25, because I am a designer and I always recieved atleast $50 for any website designs. I have 0.0001% experience with vbulletin skinning so I am not confident to make a design, slice it up and then edit it to suit the forum at all. I will check those sites... and do post some more links. I want to take a good enquiry before I pay big bucks for a top notch job. . Thanks for those links though...

[ChrisLM2001]

Ages is an understatement. It's why the skins have a very familiar look, as designers copy each other's styles and framework, and put in their own to give it a different image look. For someone just needing something different from the default skin, it'll do. But if you want custom areas for banners (like giving it a built in look, not just hanging it in an open space the mods do); a sidebar like WHT's (or even a skin that's similiar) that xhtml friendly, you will need to literally hack apart your forum to do it.

Skinning is also more unforgiving than code work (<-- as it doesn't show it's messiness to the public). Try putting up a <div> and it not align and see how your client's aggravation gets higher and higher, as they want it done yesterday while you're fighting to get it align among all the main browsers.

Ever wonder why there isn't an official tableless skin yet? That's the main issue! It's a shame, because a tableless navbar loads 3x faster than a tabled one. Translate that to the other messy tables to see how fast your forum can load up, and be even more search engine friendly <-- more content, less presentation tags for it to grab!

Since you have the capacity, dive in and learn the templates, because if you want to design for vB you got to get your feet wet.

Chris

[KingSpade]

To be honest, styling a vBulletin Style really would not take 2 weeks if you are used to vBulletin's template system. I've designed plenty of styles for vBulletin and have been working with it since 2000 and I can't say anything is particularly hard about it (again, once you get used to it, it becomes second nature, just like coding or designing).

Most designers drop the basic navigation bar anyway, so the worries of working with it are normally long gone and redone by the time the style is completed.

Creating the design would probably be the longest process, though most designers could create a design in a few days to a week, depending on how many modifications have to be made to it.

All in all, it would really depend on how advanced you want the design I suppose.

I do agree, however, on the pricing. Too many people expect a complete and unique style for $25-$100. With that, they expect it to be designed, cut & coded and supported for months. If you're new to styling and just want to build a portfolio, I could understand low pricing, but not for one that has been doing it for a while.


As for your original question, www.vbcore.com may be a nice option. Try there and see what they can do for you in terms of pricing.

[ChrisLM2001]

It will take more than 2 weeks to design a style that's not a cookie cutter type. If you just want to change the colors and gradients, that can be done in no time. But if you want to move the tables around (or better replace them with <div> all together), add custom buttons and smilies, no way to do it in 14 days (unless you have a team of designers, which makes it even more expensive to produce a skin <-- they need to be paid too).

If vB was more like a web page, and allows more work arounds (like IE conditionals -- hint, hint), a skin could be fashioned fairly quickly (in days) with interesting layouts.

Chris

[Colin F]

Couldn't you use the template conditionals in place of IE conditionals?

<if condition="is_browser('ie')">whatever</if>

See also here: http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/f...n_conditionals

[ChrisLM2001]

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm......

Going to try it out now. Maybe that'll work, and if it does, I'll give you many, many, many karma points!!

Chris

[ChrisLM2001]

Couldn't you use the template conditionals in place of IE conditionals?

!! Karma !!
!! Karma !!
!! Karma !!

Chris

[KingSpade]

It will take more than 2 weeks to design a style that's not a cookie cutter type.

It would depend on how much time is spent per day and how different of a design the customer is looking for. Sure, modifying the styles and the gradients is probably a 5-10 minute job since it is just text & path edits, though that is not to say a unique design would take 2+ weeks for someone who knows the vBulletin template system.

Now, if your going to redo the template system and attempt to go tableless, or as close to as possible, then yes, you probably have a job on your hands.

[ChrisLM2001]

So much so that I'm here looking at programming books to figure this out (the above conditional works, but not practical -- makes the page bigger than it needs to be). :cry:

Going to find a better and practical way to get a tableless design -- and one that's not so browser dependent. Think I found it, but we'll see.

Chris

[Zachery]

Having done ALOT of templating work for 3.0/3.5, I can say that

1. Custom navbars are not _that_ hard to do.
2. Even somone who knows the template system fairly intamently, will have problems from time to time.
3. There is a sheer number of hours required to get concept (image) to code regardless of how complicated it is. I believe I spent 10-15 hours just doing a very basic style (colors, graidents, 90% new graphics). It would have taken me longer assuming it was a more complicated style.

I know the template system well. It hasn't changed much since the vB2 days aside from conditionals <3.

As far as custom work goes? You better be prepared to spend a mininum of 250 dollars for somthing basic. At 30 dollars an hour you'd run out of budget around 8 hours and 20~ min, alot of designers / coders charge more. Alot of coders are not designers. You might have to absorb the cost for both. Design work may take 3-5 hours x75 USD for a designer, and then 8-15 x45 hours for someone to code it into vB at a level that satasfiys the design. Worst case, is over a grand. Best case is around 500.

[ChrisLM2001]

If they're tabled it's nothing to do (but tables aren't what the links are suppose to be enclosed in, and it's slow loading).

But the correct way -- a tableless solution -- for vB is very hard to do. Unlike a web page which can use CSS conditionals, vB won't allow it.

Chris