As you may know I am about to launch IceLabz and the development is still not yet finished. It took 2 steps backwards to completion when I upgraded to IP.Board 2.2.1.

As the new ip.board 2.2.1 has a new template & css style it has affected quite a lot of javascript work and a lot of other template bits. Which were necessary to run my checkout system. So at the moment I am working on redesigning the template as there are these bugs and also I felt that the current template did not meet a high standard and was not looking quite right for a commercial site.

The old design
Here is a list of things that I thought was really bad about the design. First thing is that it still looked like the default ipb board and I wanted it to be unique and very unique* (Not the type of unique where there is only a color and image edit but a full revamp of the default style).

The Current and ongoing design
The new design that I am still working on is pretty different from the old one. Structure wise I mean, as the color scheme is still the same apart from a few minor tweaks. The image placement are still the same but just improved and it is clearer to see. I am aiming on a totall anhillation of the default template structure of ipb. The problem with that is how far can I go before losing features of the design just to meet better usability? Oh and one more thing continous seamless intergration between forum and other parts of the site.

Some Possible problems I might face
IP.Board is quite customisable but to an extent where the designer would have to start playing with php, which I really don’t want to as I want to my zero-file edit policy. This would be a really hard challeng as IP.Board has still hardcoded html within the php source. Not only that the php still has some hardcoded html I fear that the javascript might have some hardcoded css id/classes which would limit me form remaking the template from scratch.