By now it's probably become obvious but there are new skins in place. Perform a forced refresh of the page for best results.

These skins are based on the work done by Detruire for the QSF skinning contest back in January 2007. He's given his permission for the work to be used as the new default for both QSF and QSFP, as well as the new Ashlander skin. Both of these skins are entirely tableless.

Also, due to the new skin, the next release version of QSFP will be bumped up to 1.4.0 to reflect the drastic change. Upgrading from old versions will cause the entire default skin to be replaced with the new templates - so if you have anything in there that needs to be preserved it would be wise to export a backup of your skin now. If you're not using the default, then it won't be as big of a problem, but the old skins will not cleanly handle any new templates added to them by the upgrade scripts.

Please hammer the site and try everything with the new skins. Report any oddities back to this post. The new skin has been committed to the SVN repository and will be available to those who wish to help test it on other systems.

I'm not going to reiterate all the stream of feedback you've gotten over at The SmaugFUSS Project, but I will express some slight concern at what you've said regarding this paragraph:

Does that mean that my heavily modified AshlanderPortal skin will be screwed entirely when I do my next QSFP upgrade? Would it be "safe" to back up my database for the forums (with particular emphasis on the templates and css stuff) and my existing skin and then restore it over the upgraded QSFP install?

I'd just do a diff of my existing stuff versus a stock QSFP 1.3.5 install but I don't know how to do sucha thing for the datebase side of the install.

If your skin is not the default skin, as in the one that came with QSFP, then no. You don't have anything to worry about. The upgrade script will add any missing templates you don't have to it, but won't just globally replace everything.

A global replacement would happen if you're still using the skin named as "QSF Comet Portal" stored in the "default" directory. There are people who have been known to simply build up from there as they develop, but it's standard practice in skinning to create a copy and work from that.

Either way, it's always wise to have backups of your site in case something does go wrong.

Ok, sounds reasonably good.. I think.. in my case, I've got my copies of QSFP running such that they think my version of the AshlanderPortal skin is their only skin available, but it's not the original skin that came preinstalled stock as default, that one I actually deleted altogether some time ago. So when the time for upgrade comes along, the upgrade should just insert whatever missing templates into my existing skin.. or it'll install the new skin along with whatever missing templates and then I'll need to go through the database and change which skin those templates are assigned to? Maybe I should just backup everything then do the install when the time comes and see for myself, eh?

Oh, while I'm asking questions, does this new skin support the three column look for the front page like the old one did?

I don't know if it would like being forced to do a 3 column layout. Some of the problems from the old skins were caused by the mere existence of the 3rd column. IE especially hates it and it's not yet possible to ignore it. It never took very much to destroy things with it.

The upgrader always reinstalls the default skin along with adding the new templates to the ones that are already there. Once it's done this you'll have to then go through the list of templates the upgrader says it added and adjust them to fit your board.

Hmm, I may have to set up a clean/stock install with the new skin and see how bad it reacts to a third column to see what I'm dealing with then at some point..

Ah, ok, now I understand what you were saying.. so that should work out.

I'm pretty sure it wouldn't like that.

BTW, some of the emotion images don't load ( for instance) above the post box.

And the white background doesn't seem to be in the background. (I'm using latest Firefox release)

If you don't mind my asking, how come?



What white background? The one in the post box?

Oh, and welcome aboard, Detruire.

The missing emoticons are because I've also got the Ashlander version of the skin installed and it has a different set.

And which white background are you referring to? These news comments aren't quite the same as a normal post even though that's all they're stored as.

The white background I'm referring to is the white background of the page.

Beside this comment box should be white, yet all I see is the blue background image. (With the lines)


Are you wanting to know why won't it like it, or why I think it won't?

If I'm right on how I believe I made the HForum skin, it shouldn't be difficult. Yet, often it's not as simple as I think it is.

Well, I figured that since you made it, you had every reason to know better than me how it'd handle being asked to display three columns instead of two, so I was really asking about why it wouldn't like it.

Funnily enough, when I went back to my original HForum design (it wasn't a skin), added another 'blocks' section, and changed the width of the 'main' section, the third column worked fine.

See the image: Double column HForumv3 (Still, this isn't the QSF skin. It's the original stand-alone version)

Yes, but the fact is, if the original version can do it, then so can the QSF layout if someone is inclined to. Personally I prefer it as 2 column because the 3rd one robs that much more space from people and there's already been one fight over the supposed loss of space.

That loss of space, I believe, is the reason there is only one side bar. There was originally two bars, but combined, only 50% of the page was available to the main content.

As for the skin doing so too... The CSS / XHTML is more than just a bit different in the QSF skin.

Any chance of being able to edit our own posts on this page?

Well, the one or two people who took exception to the space issue aren't users of my forums and I rather prefer a three column layout for my own forums, so I may just look into this for myself if it's deemed feasible (which so far it appears to have been) by your experts.

The main reason I prefer three columns to two is that I list the top ten rather than five in each category and have a much longer affiliates list than most, so I'd prefer to span that information between two sidebars rather than have it all scrolled in one.

Back to the subject of upgrading for a moment.....

Just tested a full scale upgrade from MercuryBoard 1.1.4 to the upcoming QSFP 1.4.0 and it passed with flying colors. Completely left a second skin I had installed for testing alone. Of course that doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot since there's only 2 other QSFP skins even available, one of which I've already developed into the new layout

On the other hand, Samson, it does mean that those of us who've customized our own skins based on one of those two should be fairly safe.