Lewd

malmon
The old design, particularly the one linked to in this thread, is just more intuitive to use for anyone that has ever used a forum before. The new design also does several things I don't like.

After stripping out some of the annoyances, you're left with this view:

Here are the issues that I see.

• The top bar is at least 33% more thick than it needs to be. Perhaps even 50% moreso.
• Gap between top bar and content, which is most likely due to me blocking elements willy nilly, but is too big regardless. 25% reduction
• Gaps between topics could be reduced by 20% without making them feel crowded, same for the left bar with the forum categories
• Who's online section seems designed to only have a few users visible on screen at once without a fuckhuge monitor
• Shittons of wasted space that could be presenting topic summaries in the main view

Not pictured:

• Reply and follow buttons should be below the timeline view
• Timeline view should be bigger
• Wasted horizontal space
• "Follow" should have more options than it does.

Follow options:

• Blocked. Ignored + hide this thread from me
• Ignored. Never get notifications for this thread.
• Normal/Not Following. Only get notifications if tagged.
• Summary/Following. Get notified (with a UI element) of new replies (see below pic)
• Detailed/Following. Get notifications for every reply.

Summary notifications should only show # of new replies (unless some of them tag you).

I could add more but I'm meandering at this point.

Dex Interesting seeing how it's grown. That's not even the OG OG design. This is the oldest (non-broken) archive that web.archive.org has https://web.archive.org/web/20141221005844/https://lewd.sx/

Some lesser known info, when I originally made Lewd and Clicky and I were designing it, it wasn't even MyBB. That was the second iteration of Lewd before the current forum software. If memory serves, it was IP Board. At the time, too, we used a premade theme. I would have to do some ungodly amounts of digging to find the name of it. We based the original theme for Lewd off of that one though, whatever it was called.

Our next iteration in terms of design was here https://web.archive.org/web/20160114231050/https://lewd.sx/
This was actually another project I had with clicky, for a site called brutal.pw. At this moment in time, Clicky and I had a small themeing "business" of sorts for forums we called MyBB Solutions.
https://web.archive.org/web/20161023175538/https://lewd.sx/

At the time, I was 13, 14 when Lewd was made. I obviously didn't have the funding to keep it up as longer than just a pet project. I did some online work on the side doing web design, but not consistent enough to "make it." So Lewd changed hands to Clicky. Clicky and I would continue to do other projects together for a little bit going forward, but we eventually just went our separate ways in life.

Weird to look back and see things like this. I'm 23 now, turning 24 this year, and this was all definitely instrumental parts of my development I'd say. https://lewd.sx/d/1-were-back