Vbulletin Template Design For Large Technology Community

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT US:

XDA-Developers.com is the largest mobile phone community on the internet. Its been around for nearly a decade and is well known by the technology community. The core of the site is the developers that create software for the Android and Windows Mobile smartphone devices. The site also has a massive base of users that exchange tips, tricks, and ideas about certain smartphone devices.

The heart of the site is the forum, which can be accessed via http://forum.xda-developers.com. Currently, the forum design is very ugly and difficult to navigate. We need a clever designer to help us improve the look and function of the forum.

HERE IS WHAT WE NEED:

Were looking or a clean design.. The color pallet must be distinct and easy on the eyes (people spend on average 10 minutes on these forums and so text readability is very important). The XDA forums have long been identified with the brown and yellow color scheme. Bonus points if you can use brown and yellow and make something wonderful, but we are open to adding some new colors (and shades) to the mix. Were also looking for a design for all visual elements of vBulletin, including: pagination, forum headlines, and all buttons (this includes New Thread, Post Reply, Edit, Quote, MultiQuote, QuickReply, Reply, Home, Find, Send PM, Locked (thread), and Forward) and drop downs.

We need several templates. PLEASE PRESENT US WITH ONLY THE FOLLOWING TWO TEMPLATES: HOMEPAGE EXPANDED INDEX AND POST VIEW. These two templates are described in detail below.

The homepage expanded index template should present the user with all forums on the site, plus the device images. It should be similar in structure to the current forum index at http://forum.xda-developers.com, but should implement a cleaner visual style. There should be a 728x90 ad below the navigation. There should also be a 300x250 ad after the first forum category.

The post view template is what the user sees when they click on a forum thread. You can see an example here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthre... . We need a cleaner way to display user information (avatar, number of posts, number of stars, carrier, country, etc). Within the first post on any page, there must be a space for a 300x250 advertisement in the upper right corner of the post. Below the navigation, there must be a space for a 728x90 advertisement. Please add a button to ReTweet this thread that resides somewhere along the top, and also a per-post button ReTweet this post.

In the wrap-up portion of the project, in addition to the two templates mentioned, well need:

- Condensed forum index view (which will present user with a grid of device pictures, along with filtering options along the top)

- Category view (listing of sub-forums accessed when user clicks on a category. The categories are the device names)

- Thread view (listing of threads when user clicks on a sub forum)

OUR TARGET AUDIENCE IS:

Our target audience is tech-savvy individuals that own smartphone devices.

WE LIKE THESE EXAMPLES:

We like the simple and clean design of the forums at neowin.net.

WE ABSOLUTELY MUST HAVE THIS IN OUR PIECE:

1. If you want and it fits with your design, you can use the logo and brown navigation strip found on http://www.xda-developers.com.

2. The templates will be implemented (by us) as variable width. You can optimize them for 1024 in your design, but we want to ensure that the site can shrink well for lower resolutions or smaller screens. This essentially means do not put too many fixed-width items horizontally on the same line. You can see on the site now that box with the leaderboard ad and the device navigation is too wide when a user shrinks the page.

3. Please focus on good ad integration. They should be well integrated and should mesh well with the content.

4. On all pages of the forum, we must have the main navigation be present with the following links: XDA Portal, Wiki, Device Database, Donate, Todays Posts, Search, Quick Links, User CP, Log Out.

5. Each page should have the Devices by OS or Manufacturer dropdown, the Jump to your device dropdown, as well as a search box that is always visible. We think these three elements might fit nicely in a single horizontal bar either below or above the top Leaderboard ad.

6. Note the breadcrumbs that appear in the top bar as you navigate the forums. These can be integrated with the logo if it makes sense in your design (meaning the breadcrumbs can spring from the logo).