Post Holiday Banner w/ NEW Idea!

[bethrich]

I love the snowman. As pretty as the cardinal is, this is a paper crafters forum and IMHO our banner should show off our gorgeous artwork.

[Hasmom99]

I think the snowman tag is wonderful. I like the cardinal too, but if I had to pick, I think the snowman wins (sorry cardinal, come back for a spring picture . . .)

[mpizzazz]

That's true, Beth! On the other hand, it's photos and scrapping that brought us all together so I do think that photos have a rightful place here and there is no denying that they are paper!
I think variety is good.

[EDelValle]

I really like the cardinal in the branches, but, I would
recolor the lettering to red: )
The black is hard to see.

[julierealtor]

gorgeous cardinal Deb...but I love that wintry crackle background...

[Debbie J]

Love it Marianne!

[admin]

Just weighing in here.. I love both banners, but I'd be happier if it were put to a vote for one or the other to keep until spring. It's not terribly time-consuming to switch banners, but I don't really want to get into the habit of switching them around every few weeks.

I'm truly grateful for everyone who is submitting all of this banner art, because it means less for me to do, and because they're all very fabulous. But to switch out the banners does involve messing with stuff at the code level, and it's just not something I want to do more than a few times a year, if it can be avoided.

Thanks again to everyone who submits banner artwork! Maybe sometime I can figure out how to set up a rotating banner, so we can showcase all of the submissions that we get each season. But until then, can we vote on one to use from now until Spring, and then start another round?

[djenns]

I like both and agree about the photos and crafting being what PAO is.....I would love to see a vote of some kind.

Diana

[InkPattie]

While it was a thrill that mine was chosen last winter, I don't think we should recycle old banners--we should use new stuff, even if it means we need to issue a challenge to create something new that works for the season.

Love the cardinal photo, but also find the black writing hard to read. And I do prefer the paper-crafted ideas.

The cropped snowman is way cool...er...COLD! This would be my preference (or something new) if we are going to change the banner.

But based on what the admin said, is the current banner really so out of date, if we set a "spring" target date of March 1? I'm planning on spring returning to south Florida next week, so March 1 is a stretch for down here LOL. But for up north, you're all going to be really desperate to see some springiness at the start of March, right? Could we leave the current banner until March 1? So those are my top picks (in order):

1. leave the current banner until March 1
2. issue a challenge to make something new to be used for January through April
3. use the cropped snowman

If we choose the challenge, I would love to have everyone submit a tag and string them all together again. My favorite banners have been the ones with art from multiple people.

[mpizzazz]

Since I brought up the idea of changing the banner, I thought I would weigh in on this. Sorry, Admin, I didn't realize it was an annoying job to change banners. Ignorance is bliss, I just thought it was like changing a photo. And I didn't mean for this to become a big production.
I also vote that we just leave it as is if people don't mind. I really do like the snowman but after all it isn't even Winter everywhere.
If people know ahead of time about a March 1 deadline, they can be working on a design for Spring/Summer that we can use until the Fall.

[azemigh]

I love the idea of submitting tags and stringing them together for the banner. The more artists we showcase the better. Maybe we could vote on a general theme to make tags and all post to one thread so they are easy to find.

[mpizzazz]

Good idea, Rachelle! I really do like the idea of a collage of several people's work. I've not been real comfortable with the idea that we vote for individual works as someone's feelings are bound to get hurt at some point.

How about Tim inspired tags with a Spring/Summer theme by a March 1 deadline in greens and flower colors?
As you can see 13 tags fit in the space nicely when you make them all 120 pixels high. I sure do wish the banner could go all the way across the top. Those blank spaces at the ends really bother me.

[pamcook]

I'll get mine done tonight. Whatever we decide is fine with me.
Marianne - I had to scroll up to see the blank spaces - never noticed it before!

[jfugina]

Marianne - I also love the idea of showcasing as many artists as possible in the banners! Something to note about the "empty space" though. As a web developer, I have to be conscious of images and how they look on all sizes of monitors and all screen resolutions. For users who have their resolution set lower, to allow for everything to be larger, that banner size actually does take up the full width of the screen. And, if the banner is actually wider than what the monitor can display, then the forum will make itself wide enough to accommodate, and then the person reading is having to scroll back and forth horizontally to read the messages.

There's no perfect solution, unfortunately. The size of the banner we have here is roughly the same as what we use at Wash-U, for example. It's a fairly typical size. Any larger (in any direction) and it starts hindering people who have smaller screens or lower resolutions set. Any smaller, and it becomes unreadable for people with higher resolutions.

And on the topic of swapping out the banners, my DH runs a PHPBB3 forum just like this one, and he's also grumbled about how it's not straightforward to change any of the graphics. On some brands of forums, it's just a setting - go to the config and upload the image and you're done. Not this one. He never even changed the colors from the default blue (like this one), because it wasn't obvious where all of the necessary graphics files were. The forum itself is very easy to set up, but to try to modify the appearance - well, I'm guessing there's a reason that most of the PHPBB forums I've seen are all blue.

[mpizzazz]

Well, Julie, you know how those "users" are, they want everything and think it's easy to make it happen! My DH has worked at colleges for the last 25 years and I learned very quickly that "users" was a dirty word. Life would be so much more pleasant without them!
Thanks for explaining! I know how annoying it is when you have to scroll back and forth to read messages. I'll be more tolerant of those blank spaces now.