My communities' layout/design was made by PureVB.com. I purchased it a few months ago and it came with a few extra themes as well. So, who made your forum's design/layout? Did you make it yourself or did you outsource and have someone else make it?
I did. Sort of. As in I chose the colours and made any code modifications, another member made the images.
The first forum that I had was way back in 2006-7 and those days, phpBB was the big fish. I had tweaked some of the CSS and changed some of the images to give it a totally different look. Today, I have just a few days old forum and I have opted for a pre built theme. As of now, I do not have time to change it but yes, if t gets popular, I might think of going in for my own theme. Oh yes, it is on phpBB again
I actually made my own layout for my forum. It doesn't look the greatest and I am still learning how to use photoshop. Some of my members are saying it looks alright but it can be improved. What are some useful tools that you guys use for designing your forums?
I customized a premade skin, that's called Simple Cheats for IPB. I cant remember where I got it from though.
I customized my Theme myself. Firstly using a Free one that was available and modifying the Colour Scheme, Layout, Text and Background Images/Colours within that theme. It also helped me find my away around my Forums coding, with it being the first time using MyBB it helped a lot getting used to how the script works.
I make my own but if I were going to pay anyone to do one for me it would be Hanafi Jamil of SultanTheme. No one else comes close to the amount of detail he puts into his work. Not to mention he does one-offs. You are the only site with the theme and you own the rights to it.
I just get free skins from the simple machines site since its pretty good for them, smf doesn't have good themes as people have not made very many good ones.
I actually started from a utilitarian approach, valuing functionality and ease of navigation over embellishments. The board is not like any classifieds advertising site you've seen before. For user blogs, I implemented several user-selectable light and dark skins that are totally different, yet integrate well with the rest of the board.
My forum layout and designs were made by me, thanks for vbulletin 5, no regret using its been flexible without add-ons