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A reluctance to move from old shoes to new

Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2009-12-05 09:55:24 - Graham Ellis

I have a comfortable old pair of shoes. They're worn out, scruffy, and they leak a bit these days but I'll still wear them and be reluctant to move onto a new pair, even though that new pair would be much smarter and make a far better first impression. And I don't think I'm the only one. Showy clothes may be one thing, but day to day, familiarity and comfort rule for many of us.

When the First Great Western CoffeeShop first saw the light of day on our site, it was decorated in a vanilla (default) Simple Machines Forum style. It's good, it's workmanlike ...and it has served well through over 50,000 posts in over 5,000 topics. But it's the same style as you'll see on many other forums and it lacks a "this is us" approach - it's more like "look who we have copied" and "we haven't altered for years" - the sort of message that a forward looking site doesn't want to predict into the far future.

So I was on a "hiding to nothing" when I applied a fresh coat of paint in the Coffee Shop ... it really was due - in fact overdue - but it's the daily workhorse of so many members that there was bound to be a reaction of "we like our old shoes" ... so what to do?

There are now three (and it could be increased) style sheets available, and they are selected within the PHP as a page is loaded, looking at the value of a cookie (if present) from the user. So new arrivals on the site, who have never stood in the original shoes, are taken to the new look and feel. Regular guests can follow a link to the original look and feel or if they like the old heritage "Great Western Railway" colours they can have those. And, yes, there is a return to current link too.

Even underlying the apparent casualness of this, there are serious points to be born in mind. It was suggested that we paint the job in First Great Western colours, but we have decided against. We are an independent forum providing information for passengers about the company and its services, and we cannot mimic them / do anything which gives the impression that we are they. Pity in some ways - it would provide a good link, and they use some nice colours.

And the ability to provide different fonts and font sizes as well as colours helps us make our site more accessible to those who are colour blind, or require a larger and cleaner character set - such provision being a requirement under legislation. And now that the work has been done once, we can easily add extra veneers as needed.


The techniques I have used are familiar ones that I regularly teach to people - but (as Lisa just reminded me a few minutes ago) just because I find them easy to implement doesn't mean that they are clear and obvious to others. We cover the subject on our PHP techniques workshop and will be happy to have you sign up for that if you have the same requirement. We have a learning to program in PHP course too if the whole PHP subject is new to you.