Trains forum banner

[Duq]

Earlier today the banner on the Train Tech forum was accidentally changed to something with a dragon. There were a few complaints, then a post 'it's now fixed', and a lock on the topic.

Am I the only one who thinks it's not fixed? Why has it been years since the Train Tech forum had a train-related banner? I've posted here before, I've tried to contact the Trains mod, overall Eurobricks mods, nothing seems to help.

The Star Wars banner:

The Sci-Fi banner:

The Technic & Model Team banner:

The Scale Modeling banner:

They all make sense. So why are we stuck with this nonsense?

 

Does the Train Tech forum still have a moderator? If so, can you do something about this? There's an old train banner (with the BNSF loco) that would be better than this and I'm sure there are people here who can create something better.

So how to we make this change happen?

And while we're at it, can we call this forum just 'Trains' instead of 'Train Tech'?

[Darkdragon]

Just now, Duq said:

Am I the only one who thinks it's not fixed?

The problem from this morning is fixed.  There is no trains forum specific banner to set to this forum, it was previously using the default forum (Spring) theme and now is using City which seems more train-like to me. We can change it back to the site-wide default if it's offending everyone here to use City.

Not every sub-forum of the site has it's own banner and theme.

[Duq]

 

Just now, Darkdragon said:

The problem from this morning is fixed.  There is no trains forum specific banner to set to this forum, it was previously using the default forum (Spring) theme and now is using City which seems more train-like to me. We can change it back to the site-wide default if it's offending everyone here to use City.

Not every sub-forum of the site has it's own banner. 

But some do, like the ones I highlighted. Long time ago this forum did have a train banner. Then some software update replaced it with white and pink bunnies if I remember correctly and we haven't seen a train since.

Hence my question: How do we get a train banner over this forum?

[jrathfon]

Agree with Duq. If we were told how, I'm sure the train user group could easily create more than one Trains banner.

Also, DO we have an active Trains moderator?

[Darkdragon]

I'll look into it for you. The old banner doesn't work with the new forum software and that's why it was set to the default theme.  A new banner is the only solution but there are procedures that must be followed so I'll see what I can find out. 

[Duq]

Just now, Darkdragon said:

I'll look into it for you.

Thank you!

[supertruper1988]

I would be open to making a new banner if there is a place I can see the guidlines. 

[Carefree_Dude]

I'd love a train banner but I'm just happy the Easter one is gone

[Roadmonkeytj]

@Duq

JIM 

Helped us get the pirates forum banner you might reach out to him.

 

[M_slug357]

If anyones’ taking suggestions, I think it’d be amazing to have a moving banner featuring those 8? 16? bit train sprites from a few decades back.

If that’s not possible, maybe we can convince @Tenderlok to provide an ensemble shot of all the steamers he’s built?

 

[CSW652]

This forum needs a unique banner, please somebody make it happen.

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

12 hours ago, Duq said:

Thank you!

Thanks for paying attention to the question Duq, it would be nice to have a banner that connotes this forum!

[JopieK]

Well I ask it in the staff forum how I add the banner to Train Tech: maybe we should also make a banner contest :)

[Duq]

1 hour ago, JopieK said:

Maybe we should also make a banner contest :)

Good idea!

Can you also find out the requirements? Size, file type?

[zephyr1934]

3 hours ago, JopieK said:

maybe we should also make a banner contest :)

I was thinking the same thing reading through the thread and then there you put it. Perhaps even have a new contest every 3-6 months to keep it fresh.

[Coal Fired Bricks]

3 hours ago, JopieK said:

maybe we should also make a banner contest :)

That would be great.  

Do you think we should be able to use other people's pictures?

1 minute ago, zephyr1934 said:

Perhaps even have a new contest every 3-6 months to keep it fresh.

That would be great so we aren't stuck with the same banner for the next 3 years, and we could see some different styles of banners. 

17 hours ago, Duq said:

The Scale Modeling banner:

Was that big train ever in TRAIN TECH? 

-Coal Fired

Edited April 30, 2020 by Coal Fired Bricks

[TrainDragon]

This link to a discussion on the pirate forum suggests a size of 1920x200.  Looks like the picture will be center cropped for users with smaller screens, so items at the center of the image will be preserved with the edges being discarded.

Current in-use banner images appear to be a mixture of PNG and JPG.

[Duq]

Other people's pictures: always ask permission.

The big train: don't know if it was mentioned here, but this is the builder's Flickr:

EMD SD40-2 Lego 1:16 by Bricksonwheels, on Flickr

 

Thought there were more photos, not sure where they're gone.

[Darkdragon]

18 minutes ago, TrainDragon said:

This link to a discussion on the pirate forum suggests a size of 1920x200.  Looks like the picture will be center cropped for users with smaller screens, so items at the center of the image will be preserved with the edges being discarded.

Current in-use banner images appear to be a mixture of PNG and JPG.

The Pirate forum themes/banners are different than the rest of the site. The banners on the site are left-justified and not center, so the leftmost area would always be visible.

 

4 hours ago, JopieK said:

Well I ask it in the staff forum how I add the banner to Train Tech: maybe we should also make a banner contest :)

Good to see things moving forward.  

[SteamSewnEmpire]

20 hours ago, Darkdragon said:

The problem from this morning is fixed.  There is no trains forum specific banner to set to this forum, it was previously using the default forum (Spring) theme and now is using City which seems more train-like to me. We can change it back to the site-wide default if it's offending everyone here to use City.

Not every sub-forum of the site has it's own banner and theme.

I think we should have our own banner. I don't believe it would be that difficult to come up with one.

[dr_spock]

The quick fix might be to take the old train forum banner (Sante Fe EMD F-unit loco and the minifigs) and modify it to work with the new forum software, if that is feasible?

 

[JopieK]

Ok, so I discussed it with the rest of the staff and they think it is a good idea. I also did see the 1920 x 200, but after analyzing the source, it apparently uses two banners: 

The second one is being repeated horizontally again and again:

Resolution of both is 900 x 200.

[Darkdragon]

1 hour ago, dr_spock said:

The quick fix might be to take the old train forum banner (Sante Fe EMD F-unit loco and the minifigs) and modify it to work with the new forum software, if that is feasible?

 

Unfortunately that is not feasible because the old banner is much too small.

40 minutes ago, JopieK said:

Ok, so I discussed it with the rest of the staff and they think it is a good idea. I also did see the 1920 x 200, but after analyzing the source, it apparently uses two banners: 
 

The second one is being repeated horizontally again and again:
 

Resolution of both is 900 x 200.

The first one is on "top" and the second one is tiled across the page underneath. The underneath one doesn't have to be as involved as the city banner, it can be something basic that would work well tiled behind the main top banner.

[AlecDGeneric]

From what I could tell from a quick look at my browser's devtools and without making assumptions about the forum-SW the only hard requirements are the height of 200px and the repeatability of the second image. The themes-backend may be more flexible than that but that's not something I can tell.

[Duq]

From what I can see you need 2 images that are 200px tall. The first one is shown once, the second one repeats as many times as is necessary to fill the width of the screen.

The banners I 'quoted' at the top, for Technic, Star Wars etc are 1800x200. Their second image would only be used on very wide screens. For Star Wars it's just black with a few stars, for Technic it's the same image but without the 'Eurobricks uniting Technic...' text.

So for trains we could do the same; have an 1800px wide image of something, then a second image that would 'fit' to the right. Another option would be an image of an engine as image 1 and an image of a carriage as image 2, so the wider your screen the more carriages you'd get behind your engine. The only requirement then is that the width of image 1 is a multiple of image 2.

I've done a simple mockup, playing with dev tools.

Image 1:

Image 2:

Result:

EN-Banner-Mockup by Duq, on Flickr

 

So that's how easy it is. Now we just need someone with better graphic design skills than me to create proper images.