Update 9/17 – We’re just about there getting all the pages back online. Still need to add the patches and programs pages for the various games. This will take another week, but as I stated I’m working as fast as possible on it! I tried to get them under a new system but things didn’t work out. Oh well, it’s all good. Once they are back up, then it is time for me to update, update and update with a bunch of programs/tutorials that I need to get caught up on! Thank you for being patient during this time!
Well, we’re now sporting our new design with thanks to Jack Griffiths (Oink) for the help with the graphics! It’s been 10 years sporting the blue blocks…I became pretty tired of it myself and wanted a site that had a more ‘Sims’ look and feel to it. So with a little experimenting (and a free theme called Mystique to play around with) I think we’re finally able to put it into effect! Now, I have a ton of work to do…hence the need for this post. I had to un-publish all of the site pages in the meantime. News is the only thing accessible right now. But don’t fret, the pages will be back online as soon as possible! I just need to go through each one and make sure everything is looking the way it should – and to update with some much needed content.
If this bothers you, I am deeply sorry. I’ll work my hardest to bring them back in a timely manner, but I’m going to give myself a two-week time period. If this is not convenient for you, please hit up Google and type what you are searching for. I’m sure you can find what you are looking for on another site. 😉
Anyhow, please provide feedback in this post – let me know if there is anything broken or awkward on your end. Hopefully everything is good, but there is always bound to be something that was overlooked! Hope you like the new design!
Side-note by Jack: Can you believe how far SimPrograms has came? Here’s a few screenshots of previous designs. Man were they ugly! 🙂
Wow, the new site looks really great. The only thing I noticed is that when you view individual posts, there doesn’t seem to be a link or button that takes you back to the home page. If there is, I missed it. That would be nice instead of using back button.
so awesome! great job Jud and Jack! Best Sims site ever!
Looks good! I like it a lot!
Awesome job Jud! But maybe you can add some buttons for the thing above the news that moves and shows us the latest important news so we can go through ones that we missed. Hope you understood that haha
Wow. This is an amazing design. Complete new fresh look. What a way to celebrate 10 years.. 🙂
when i so this site , i ask what is that 🙂
realy nice site i like it 10/10
Oh ok! Well the site looks great! 😀 Congrats!
Working great on Firefox and IE here. In the non-mobile version on my iPod touch the Sims on the sides of the page get cut out. No biggie though, you get to see the important part anyway!
Looks pretty nice 😀
I like it. 😀
Love it! Great job guys 🙂
It’s part of the menu – should be back soon!
A.w.e.s.o.m.e. 😀
I’m not sure if I can add buttons to that part, I think the theme has it controlled automatically. Normally it will be up-to-date, but those three posts were the ‘tests’ of the featured category. It’ll be updated when major news hits from now on 🙂
I can’t do the latest newspost in that style – due to the fact that I use flickr, for the important news I’ll have to upload a dedicated picture to the server rather than flickr for it to display properly in the featured area. Bit hard for me to explain. 🙂
Test
Test 1
Test 2
General Note – Please don’t be alarmed if you happen to see spam comments popping up in various posts. Our spam catcher seems to be on the fritz, hopefully I can get it back to working condition soon.
Very good design! I love it! Congratulations! 🙂
The new design is great! I’d agree it’d be handy to have buttons for the news thingy, but it’s not too bad to wait for them to come back around.
Looks great!!!
Please remember, share your improvements with us. We’d like to make the site as best for you guys, and if you don’t speak up then how can you help improve the design? 🙂
Brilliant! I LOVE this new design, this is now a flawless sight in my opinion, great work 😀
This looks AWESOME! Great job 😀
you should add the log on screeen if u can obviously othervise doesnt matter and you cant add buttons for the news bar or whatever so we can view the past 10 posts so we dont have to go through the pages!
ANYways the site looks great and i like the twitter and the RSS feed buttons and you should add the Facebook and You Tube buttons too!
congrats good work! 😀 🙂 smilies from my side 😛
I would love to add the YouTube and Facebook buttons up top, but there is some wicked javascript/coding that is going on with them from the original theme…I wouldn’t even know how to modify that to include them. 🙁
Login screen button – excellent suggestion. Will need to get that back up!
I’m still not sure what you mean about the last 10 posts thing….Can you clarify that more?
I like the new look! Good color scheme, not too bright or hard on the eyes, easy to read!
Great Job!! 😀
Wow!
This is W-O-N-D-E-R-F-U-L-L-!
Very well done, really great, great change!
Yours,
Meroking
http://SimVille.socjum.pl – Now you can translate 🙂
I’ll miss the blue blocks 🙁
i meant that when you are on the home page the new news thingy, it should have buttons to go through the latest news (the last 10 posts) or may be 20 so that you dont have to go through the pages
😀
😛
Sorry for the short downtime – had to battle it out with PHP and caused some errors – luckily Oink backed me up and the errors have been fixed! User login system now in place.
the top most bar which currently displays barnacle bay ino! get it!
😀 😛 🙂 *____*
Yes, by all means if you have any suggestions or something looks odd on your end, please let us know so we can investigate!
Sorry to hear about the iPod problem, “J” but I don’t think this site is meant for such a small screen 🙂
The new layout is awesome! Much faster too! 😀
The site looks fantastic! I loved seeing the old pics of the site. I remember everyone of them. I have been coming here since the beginning in 2000.
What a change! Looks great! Finally there are lots of sims everywhere! ;D
Btw, a new mobile site is in the works 🙂
I’ve been lurking for awhile now…love the new look! Finally a place where I can register. 🙂
It looks amazing!
Nice work. 😀
there is a problem in the pic below. When you make the window small.I have windows 7 and im using firefox.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/53939153@N06/4988222332/#/photos/53939153@N06/4988222332/lightbox/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/53939153@N06/4988222332/#/photos/53939153@N06/4988219478/lightbox/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/53939153@N06/4988222332/#/photos/53939153@N06/4987617633/lightbox/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/53939153@N06/4988222332/#/photos/53939153@N06/4987616445/lightbox/
😛 :b 🙂 😀
The layout is wonderful!
I sent you a few DMs on Twitter (via @alalasims) with a few things I believe you should know about.
Congrats!
If anyone is willing, can you please provide screencaps of what the site looks like on your end and tell me what browser you are using? I want to make sure everyone is seeing the same thing properly.
fantastic!!!!
I love the new design! However, it’s a bit bright and is hard to look at for a while. I think if the blue were toned down a bit it would look great. 🙂
For those that were having issues with the sidebar that looked like this – http://grab.by/6n0J please do a deep refresh (F5) and let me know if it still looks like that or you see a normal image with a plumbob.
Firefox (3.5.12)
http://i167.photobucket.com/albums/u147/Nefje/algemeen/simprograms_FF01.png
http://i167.photobucket.com/albums/u147/Nefje/algemeen/simprograms_FF02.png
http://i167.photobucket.com/albums/u147/Nefje/algemeen/simprograms_FF03.png
Google Chrome
http://i167.photobucket.com/albums/u147/Nefje/algemeen/simprograms_GC01.png
http://i167.photobucket.com/albums/u147/Nefje/algemeen/simprograms_GC02.png
http://i167.photobucket.com/albums/u147/Nefje/algemeen/simprograms_GC03.png
I like the new site (Although if there’s something I’d change, I’d probably make the solid part of the background a darker colour).
Also, if you want to get screenshots from different browsers on different OS’s, you can do it at http://browsershots.org/
I LUV IT!!!!!… but there is no link to affiliates…. 🙁
Affiliates will be coming back shortly.
Took some pictures of the site like you asked.
Internet Explorer:
http://i366.photobucket.com/albums/oo102/Nick21989/InternetExplorer.png
Chrome:
http://i366.photobucket.com/albums/oo102/Nick21989/GoogleChrome.png
Opera:
http://i366.photobucket.com/albums/oo102/Nick21989/Opera.png
Looks the same in each one.
I also went to your site earlier today on my ipod touch and it looked fine. Mine came up in a “list” format though…not the actual site.
Hope this helps!!!!!
Thanks for those, Nic. Sidebar images should be fixed – ChEeTaH from The Sims Zone had to school me on a lesson of CSS. 🙂
also when you click the link under polls for the archive, it says 404 request not found…….. 0.0
I got to figure out what is wrong with that. Thanks for letting me know!
Question: How did you guys change your picture? I can’t seem to find where to do that.
Thanks in advance!
@nick21989 – that would be http://www.gravatar.com/
The mobile version of the site is being modified. Hold tight.
I love the new look! Great job jud!
background image
margin: 0 auto;
will make it centre
Command R on a Mac or delete your cache. Either way, it’ll solve the problem.
Those look good. Try deleting your cache and then do a force-refresh (F5) to revert the look of the sidebar. What is your resolution by the way? That browser looks tiny, so I’d say the width of the browser is ~800px. Not really that common. Plus, that problem doesn’t exist for me on Safari 5 for Mac.
Once again, keep your screenshots or problems coming in!
oh sweet! updated again! this new site keeps looking better and better! 🙂
why the change in module headers? (ie: widget)
Not sure I understand, what change, Jinx?
The new design does look really great Jud!
It is working fine in Chrome, Firefox (3.6) and IE here.
In iPhone it kind of cut out on the right, but that’s okay since the main content is on the left.
I may be alone in this, but I really liked the old one.
It was simple but yet, “sophisticated”, this one looks very.. Sim-ish, like too much blue, I don’t know how to put it.
What do you think of it without the background but with a solid color (#f3f3f3) and the border not blue (#d1d1d1)?
http://bit.ly/9ZWpO6
I think it would be better that way, cause it reduces a bit of the blueness, giving the end-user a “clear” view.
Here I leave a tip to whomever uses Firefox as it main browser, it’s a plugin called “Greasemonkey” with it you can make any site look the what you want, or even include some nice scripts inside the website, as it was there in first place!
Would like to leave a thank to everyone who contributed this site and to the editors, because it’s really great, since here is my first stop for Sim News I really appreciate all the work and effort you guys put into it! Thanks! 😉
The whole idea for the re-design was to make it actually resemble a Sims site, and for it to just basically look different. 10 years with one colour scheme deserves a change, yeah? 🙂
We can’t please everyone, though. Some love the changes, some don’t like the changes.
All I say, is keep with Greasemonkey if you don’t like the blue background 🙂
Oh, and greasemonkey is also available for Safari too 😉
for those complaining, give it time. they will get used to it. i love it. the blues are pleasing to and easy on the eyes
Yes, it will definitely take some time, especially going from gray to blue. You’ll get used to it – don’t give up
*goes back to work on pages*
the new looks (both for the PC and the mobile) is sure better, and improvements are everywhere. As I see the header pictures, I think you love ghostbusting so much 😀
Gorgeous design! This is my best source site! Keep up with the amazing work 🙂
Fantastic! just noticed when I comment, the page doesn’t have to load XD 😀
YAY and so many other improvements, like color inside the text editor for posts 😀
Guys, I’m not complaining I am just stating my opinion, that’s all. 🙂
Btw, Jud, I see we now have more emoticons.
Do you mind create a topic to cover all of them?
Or are just the usual smilies? 😀
They’re just your standard smiley “codes”. Even I’ve forgotten what smilies are there!
🙂 🙁 😀
The new design looks great!
i noticed a problem that happened before with the old site. sometimes when i open one of your articles in another tab or window and then click home at the top of the page(to return to Simprograms home page) it either does nother or refreshed the page. i have to use the pull down home menu and click simprograms to go back to the main page.
I experienced the same problem -.-
That’s the way it is set at – because technically SimPrograms also consists of SporePrograms – they are both linked together using the same Content Management System. 🙂
oh ok
Love the new design :)!
I’d help to rain on the parade, but now it just looks like any other Sims site, it’s impossible to tell them apart in my opinion. Take a look at http://sims3.cz for example. Other than that, I welcome the change.
That’s because they too are using the free Mystique theme. My goal was to fit in to look like every other Sim site. Going 10 years with blue blocks and hardly any Sims design was a bit tiring. 🙂
Wow, Simprograms! The new look of the Site are beautiful! Incredible!
Congrulations! *-*
If you are curious, the site loads and shows up fine on the IE9 beta, so no problems there.
And I just remembered that I visited this site once ages and ages ago! It was when you had the version in the bottom right.
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