In Need of a Template Before Upgrading Site

Hi to all,

I will be having my website upgraded soon from 7.08 to the latest 7.1x

I have been looking at what is available in templates but nothing has caught my attention so far.

If anyone has an idea or can direct me to a template that would best fit my website

please feel free to let me know. I will leave a link to my site below. I am also interested

in a splash page if possible?

I can't spend a lot of money because I have not been able to work all of last year because of illness.

Thanks

Vito

http://mypad-yourpad.com/

Nobody is going to know what kind of template you should have on your website better than YOU. And thats the way it should be.

What you should do is decide whether or not you want to keep your existing template and update it so it will work 7.1.4. If you want something different, you need to come up with the colors, layout, images, etc. Once you have all of that in place, then post a job requesting someone to build it for you. No sense in asking others to come up with one for you since what may be 'awesome' to someone else may be 'ugly' to you. It will be a waste of time. Just my opinion.

big question to also ask is do you want a responsive template, or not. Responsive meaning it will re-arrange its layout and scale according to varying screen size, this way you get a different view of the site on tablet and mobile.

I use responsive templates only now as they give me full mobile functionality. Take a little extra thought on layout, but its worth it. 

If budget is an issue, there are some free ones, just search templates for responsive.

The rest is down to personal taste and what the sites focused on....

I took a look at your site and I see usability issues. You will have to dump the template because the template system in Dolphin 7.1.x means that your current template won't work.  If you like, I would be willing to work with you on a template design.  As stated by others, you need to decide on colours and such with guidance on why you should not use particular colour combinations, for example, you don't use red on blue or blue on red.  We can start by cloning the UNI or ALT template that ships with Dolphin and go from there.  Later on you may find a template that you like; there are template vendors off of Boonex although I have seen issues with them but then that could be said of the template vendors on Boonex.  Just because you see a template on or off of Boonex does not mean there won't be coding errors.

Thank you Zarcon and
daihlo for you fast responce. I will look into it as well.

So I can upgrade my site without having to purchase another template?

I have a 7.08 and I thought that I will need a 7.1x inorder to update my site?

I've been unable to fix the issue of the captcha on the join page so I thought having

the upgrade would fix the problem?

I cannot see how upgrading your site will resolve your captcha issue. You should start a different topic explaining the problem that you are having.

In order to get to a 7.1.x version (latest is 7.1.4), then yes you would have to upgrade your site. Several times to be exact. You have to upgrade a version at a time. So if you are on 7.0.8, then you have to upgrade to 7.0.9 first, then 7.1, then 7.1.2, etc..Seen here: http://www.boonex.com/trac/dolphin/wiki/Dol7Upgrade)

The template design in 7.1.x is totally different that what is in 7.0.x versions. It is 'possible' that someone can help tweak your current template so that it will work with 7.1.x versions. If nothing else, at least keep the concepts in place (colors, layouts, etc.)

Hi geek_girl,

Thanks for your response.

You see usability issues? In what way may I ask?

What would you charge for a template that would best fit the style of MyPad-YourPad?

All in all, I know the site needs to be easy to move around in.

Thanks much!

Vito

Thank you Zarcon

The captcha issue was address in my order post. I just don't know how to fix what was mention to me

from the order posting.

That's why I thought the upgrade may help as well.

Actually it may. Dolphin before 7.1 used it's own built in captcha. 7.1 now uses re-captcha. So yes, it may actually resolve the captcha issue.

Thanks for your response deano92964,

I thought the upgrade would solve the issue of the captcha.

True since 7.1 now uses re-captcha. However I could still be 'technically' correct since the upgrade would only move him to a new type of captcha and not really fixing his current issue ..

Well yea if you want to get technical. LOL.

And of course the captcha just bugs the heck out of users that can not figure out the letters and numerals and just say the h**l with it and leave.  There are a few replacements in the market.

As for the design, don't use blue text on red or red text on blue, those combination are very difficult to read.  Don't use low contrast text; one of the worst things that ever happen on the internet, low contrast text is hard to read.  Colours are important in cultures so one also need to keep that in mind as well if your site is international.

Did anyone ever clone the template for 7.0.x and make it so it could work on 7.1.x ?    I know some people didn't like it but I thought it was fine - I liked the neutral colors.   I have a site that is a mess and the template has to be high on the list - I think the default one is 7.1 looks awful.   I never got the image reloader back either, even though everyone said it was easy. 

Yes, 7.0.9 was much prettier than 7.1.  7.1 is ugly, they switch to those font Awful icons because of dang telephones.  I keep meaning to try and make my site prettier by removing the font awful icons.  I don't get a f about dang telephones; so they can go.