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I am ** DEATHBEAM**
So hello everyone, I was lurking around but now I finally registered. I moved from MyBB (what is also awesome forum engine) but I ended up in removing and ripping off half of MyBB features to make my site simple. I also succesfully rewrote entire MyBB table layout to modern html standards and made Bootstrap theme for it. I am deep Bootstrap fan, and then I found this epic Bootstrap theme what @Kasper made for Vanilla and decision was made. For now, I am not skilled in Vanilla plugin system at all, but I am sure I will get into it soon and maybe also contribute with something here and there. I am mainly C# programmer and game developer, but also very skilled web developer (both design and core aspects). If anyone would need design some site, I am doing free design for sites what wanna use Bootstrap.
Here is my portfolio for anyone interested: http://deathbeam.github.io
And here is what I have done with awesome Vanilla Bootstrap theme (again, thanks @Kasper for making it, you pleased my heart ): http://indiearmory.com
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Welcome to the community! You will find plenty of people who can assist you with development using Vanilla/Garden. Personally, I'm happy to find someone into game development, because I've always been curious about it, and I would be more than willing to "swap" knowledge.
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Feel free to ask anything #gamedev related, I have many knowledge to share I learned some more things about Vanilla, for now nothing about plugin system, but many about theming system, and becouse I am skilled with Bootstrap, I heavily modified @Kasper Bootstrap theme, and now, it it perfect (that purple is maybe a bit gay, I will probably change it ). Also, EpicEditor plugin also by @Kasper is epic too, couse I just love Markdown and it saved me a lot of time to implement custom Markdown editor. Also, thanks to creator of Yaga, it is epic (caused some problems at start becouse it triggered errors with InnoDB and my database got deleted, twice, but now, after sorting problems with webhost, everything is working fine). Only thing missing (again) is some sort of whosonline plugin, I must look at plugins and hooks deeper so I will be able to edit Whos Online plugin to my needs. And, again I ended up with reverse forum modification, and that is removing features and not adding them :disappointed_relieved: I simplified sidebar and navbar totally and also removed some duplicate buttons here and there (actually, I hidden them with CSS, I do not found any other way without messing with core files). New design for my site is here: http://indiearmory.com/discussions
Welcome @deathbeam,
I like it when boostrap is used but you can't tell, and it doesn't look like a boostrap clone site.
If you use boostrap I recommend merging in the styles with Vanilla selectors (such as using sass/compass version of Boostrap). Million and one view overrides is not the way to go and it make upgrades difficult, and adding many classes to elements is an anti-pattern. Vanilla has selector conventions, and expects them to be respected. Make use of vanilla sectors, boostrap behind the scenes were possible. otherwise you have templating a view overrides if you need them.
I feel weird for not really being into gaming or game development. I know technically it is an unwritten rule I should be a gamer, and game developer, and into sci-fi but I'm not. I guess the only game engine that interest me are ones to do with Go/Weiqi/Baduk type problems.
grep is your friend.
I was never fan of sass and I was never addicted to learn it. I am sticking with pure CSS, no need for some extensions. I am not going to switch to sass in near future :sweat_smile: I personally do not like websites from what you cant tell that they are using Bootstrap. I am not sure if you meant that my Vanilla theme is looking too much Bootstrapish or not, but I think it is not looking that much boot-strapped as other sites using Bootstrap. And, I saw that much Bootstrap sites, so everyone can modify their Bootstrap-powered site to maximum, but there is always some things visible, like navbar styling, buttons and icons, corners, gradients. Mostly, noone is styling labels and badges, so it is easiest way to check if it is Bootstrap site.
@deathbeam the more important part, is modifying views to put
<element class="million and one bootstrap classes">
is an anti-pattern. This is one of the disadvantages of pure css boostrap, it promotes this anti-pattern which is a bad practice, not to mention overriding all those views in vanilla is extremely difficult to maintain for upgrades. Vanilla also uses it selectors for dynamic features.So learning Less or Sass would be ideal. Then you can merge your styles into vanilla selectors, which conventional css simply can't do.
You want to do this as part of your build process rather than on the fly, so you get a nice vanilla style.
grep is your friend.
What I like about Vanilla is that it perfectly suits my needs, so I need to tidy only few small things, like make Whos Online plugin working becouse Online Now do not works at all and so on . And feel free to ask anything about game development. I am guy-for-everything, I can do almost everything game-development related, but my specialization are modern and responsive website design and PHP. Never tried ASP.NET, but I know everything about DotNet and also C# as I stated before, so I think I will try it. And also programming game core parts and game engines (but mainly 2D, you know, finding good 3D modeller is expensive and free 3D assets are ugly). But on our community we have also very skilled japanese game developer and her specialization is pixel art, ideas, stories, character design and so on. Also one german guy who is good with javascript and web game development and I baited him to Bootstrap. He is ofc not that good in website design as I am, but he is trying . Game what he is working on currently: http://indiearmory.com/pawns/ (all pixel art there is made by that japanese game dev). So, many knowledge to share .