Have you changed any of the default post icons?

I've seen many forums where everything is customized and tweaked to perfection--custom template, smileys and avatars that match the custom template, etc.--yet they still have the default post icons. On my Ice Cream forum, I've kept some of the post icons, but removed the more useless ones and replaced them with little icons of ice cream, Italian ices, etc., so the user can choose something that matches the subject of his post. (I didn't want to remove all of the smiley-type post icons as sometimes the user will just want to indicate mood.) Have you made any changes to the default vB post icons on your forum?

 

My forum is not vB, but if I did have a vB forum, I'd replace ALL the icons.

 

I have a couple of custom ones in addition to the defaults. Trouble is there doesn't seem to be much available in the way of post icons. I've never seen any packs released anyhow.

 

If I get the chance to replace the post icons then yes I changes them but often there will stay the same.

 

I turned post icons off, but I would have replaced all of them if I used that feature ^^"

 

All new post icons. The GIF file format is evil and needs to die.

 

I've never changed the post icons, but I really should. :p

 

Amen.

 

I haven't changed the post icons because to be honest the default ones look fine. Hardly anyone uses them anyway so no real need.

 

Come on Wayne, tell us how you really feel about the gif format!

 

Grrr.. I wish it had died with Compuserve but no Microsoft, Adobe and other ponied up and paid AOL (who bought Compuserve) millions of dollars in royalty fees instead of embracing a new standard in 1999. The patent is dead now but the format is a remnant of bygone days and imposes limitations that should not be present in the days of high definition video.

Anyway, there are a lot of images to be found out there. I have found many of the ones that I use looking at PNG Icon sets offered for the KDE and Gnome Desktop systems. You'll find that these are often licensed under the GPL, LGPL, and various Creative Commons license. These licenses don't restrict you to a single use so you can repurpose the icons for your forums and in most cases even give them away or sell them to others. If you find a complete icon set you'll get several hundred icons that can be used in PNG and/or SVG formats so you can build an iconset for your community.

 

+1 on "GPL'd" stuff, it's an excellent way to find truly free graphics (and other stuff) that you're free to use without worrying about licenses being revoked.

Which reminds me I'm going to poke around Gnome look for some new file attachment icons, the default ones are old school.

 

I like GIFs.

 

We only really care about Post Icons in two of our forums and those have all customized post icons and every thread is required to have one. The other forums are welcome to use the default ones (I didn't delete them) or use none.

 

I have replaced mine with ones from vbimageworks - although there are some with white matting around the edges which makes it look messy anthing is better than the default vb ones haha

 

I hate gifs. PNG's are the way to go now. They render SO much better than gif's and can be resized without losing quality (most of the time).

 

Preach it brotha! :jacks:

 

Lynne did you design your post icons or find a set somewhere?

 

The person who created our style also created the post icons for us. Occasionally I have to add a new one, but I have a psd file that I can use to modify/create them.