[SEADRA]

I was fiddling with a skin the other day, just to keep the skills up and goof around. i actually enjoy skinning and it's kind of relaxing - especially when you have a great idea. ANYWAY - since i don't have a rp site i was just sort of making a mock site just cause and the skin has a sidebar. and it got me thinking - what should you include in the sidebar? what things are overkill? are there some uneccessary things? or do people even like sidebars anymore? what about otms? do people even still do those or do they just take up space? do you like it when the cbox is in the sidebar? or do you prefer it at the bottom of the forum?

on roleplays i personally really like sidebars, that may be because i am a part of the skinning/roleplay generation that literally used them with every single skin so i'm just used to that but they really do have a lot of pros. they allow you to have a LOT of information on your site that you may not be able to have in a simple table. basically here's what i'm asking:

i. do you even like sidebars / pet peeves of sidebars? short description of why or why not (no need for a novel! aha) would be nice too~
ii. what is absolutely necessary to include in a sidebar?
iii. what is just 'extra' that you've see that didn't need to be there?
iv. cool things you've seen?

and any other comments! yeh. >:3 idk i was just thinking about that cause on the skin i'm making it looks like there's not enough boxes but i'm like 'idk what else to include here so i mean' so i decided to turn to my gs comm.

[Kuroya]

i actually usually don't like static sidebars unless they're really done well. i can't tell you why. i just don't like them. maybe it's part of the fact that i'm from the generation where everything was in sideboxes. maybe it's a personal thing. idek. i'm just really picky about them.

though on that note there are two things i never wanna see on a sidebar ever. and that is the cbox and affiliates. the cbox usually ends up too small on a sidebar, so i always feel like it ends up really cramped if it's not on the bottom. affiliates, on the other hand, is something that annoys me because more often than not, those are not on the first page, and it really bothers me when i'm affiliating with sites and i have to go looking for their affiliates - and that goes for anything, not just the sidebars.

.... and it just occurs to me that i should probs clarify my opinion oops. for me sideboxes are the things where you have the little boxes down one side while a sidebar means something like what gs has, where it's static and on the side of the screen no matter how much you scroll. so keep that in mind mkay?

what i do for sideboxes is i always go welcome, navigation/links, news/announcements, census, staff, credits. i might add otms but that's if i'm feeling generous. really you can usually reuse the staff coding for that nine times out of ten so that's not a huge concern. besides, i'm a dork who if the skin doesn't provide it already, i'll code something to compliment the original code that will get the job done, usually for like... idk house points, otms, weather, something unusual that's site-specific.

edit: one last pet peeve. having sidebars / sideboxes on both sides since it's a waste of space. or having a sidebar / pop-up cbox that overlaps information in a sidebox or something. it annoys me so much. i want to see everything without toggling goshdangit ;~;

[SEADRA]

in my head sidebar = sidebox.
i've always called that & what you're calling a sidebar has always just been a 'static sidebar' or 'scrolling sidebar'.
so in my initial thread i meant sideboxes, not a sidebar.

SORRY I'M NOT HIP ON YOUR YOUNGIN' LINGO

[Kuroya]

hey the only thing that doesn't apply for both is just the "affiliates on the sidebar". i have no problems with affiliates being in a box on a sidebar. just do not put them on the static sidebar unless they are immediately visible please and thank you.

[Zozma]

I don't like sidebars because:
1. I like wide forums.
2. I like larger avatars.
3. Having a sidebar that's always uneven next to the forum itself drives me batty.

Back when I did have them, though, I had a welcome blurb, staff info, links, and credit. On my old pokemon site, we also had the group info, status updates, and blogs.

I used to hate the shoutbox in the sidebar because it's small but I may be smooshing the one on Somnia to fit in a welcome box at the top when we introduce our expansion. I've grown tired of shoutboxes in general so I don't care if it's somewhere small anymore.

[Wolf]

Oh boy, sidebars. I have a love/hate relationship with them.

I started RPing on sites which had sidebars so for me, it was an ordinary thing to have. I can't exactly remember first time I joined an RP site without a sidebox, it didn't feel natural at first. I dunno why. Probably because it was unfamiliar.

With that said, sidebars are practical and extremely useful. They are an accessible place to dump all your information. And it's more practical than putting information in say, underneath your banner whereby you'd have to excessively scroll down every time you visit a new page. Or heaven forbid, putting your site info in a hover on your banner. Banner hovers are one of my worst pet peeves. It's annoying to mouse over the banner every time you want to quickly check something such as group stats or a quick links navigation. Plus, if the site info is frequently updated, (through OOC/IC updates), then new updates would not be obvious.

But I digress.

I have several complaints against sidebars. For one, they're mind-numbingly general and formulaic. Many sites have them and there's only so much creativity/uniqueness you could cram into fancy titles, navigation, hover boxes, whatever.

Another thing which I dislike about sidebars is the fact that really wide ones makes the rest of your forum look squished, especially if you have width mini-profiles. I have a personal rule of thumb that if a post can't fit a 500px wide template, then the actual forum too narrow.

I agree with Kuroya on the absurdity of fixed sidebars, especially when they have an excessive amount of information that a small screen resolution cannot fit. In such a case, you have no way of seeing hidden information, since you can't scroll down on a fixed sidebar.

I don't like tabbed sidebars. I can't explain this too well but they seem too cramped and 'hidden' from me. And I'm a sucker for accessibility. Also, putting cboxes on the sidebars makes them seem too cramped. Don't do it.

Like everything, there are exceptions to what I talked about, but that's my general consensus on sidebars. Hoped that was helpful in someway.