I'm not sure if you'd agree with me

the width. maybe a wider one would be better or a flexible skin that could stretch. It would be helpful in displaying images that are post etc. And idk I just feel, small..

chat. some forums have chat integrated in the forum itself so you won't have to go to seperate page. maybe we'll have more frequent real time conversations.

Official contests. i'm pretty sure people suggest this but i don't know why it doesn't exist. i'm not talking about 1 hour competitions, i'm talking about 1 week or monthlong contests.

Then we could have special awards best gfx, gameplay, etc.. we can actually feature something in the homepage. yay!

There doesn't even have to be a monetary prize or anything.

I'm sure it's a great motivator at least. I don't see any harm on conducting this.

bonus: bigger avatars?

I was on a forum in the past that had monthly competitions and they had a 'traveling trophy', so the winner of the comp would have a little trophy icon as their avatar or in their sig or whatever, and the next month it would get shifted to the new winner.

I agree on the forum width. There is a large left and right margin on my 1280x1024 display. I'd estimate that they take up about 37.5% of the width of my screen, combined. I've looked for a forum preference to change that, to no avail.

Chat? Meh. I'm not much of a chatter. I imagine some would greatly like it, though.

Contests, for me, seem good because of the fact that they encourage users to get something done. I think that we'd see more examples of what Construct can do, with contests. Thumbs up to that.

Width, yes.

Chat. I don't see what's wrong with chat, its right there at the top of the screen at all times, you click, and you're there. Certain people use it all the time, everyone else ignores it. I'm not sure what you mean, unless you're saying one less step so you don't have to choose a username, but I'm not sure that one step is what's stopping people.

Contests, idk. Can't hurt anything, might be fun. but I think 1 hr or 24 hr, or 48 hr would be the best format, I don't see people spending a lot of time on something with no concrete reward. But having it be more official with a specific forum for it, moderators in charge and on a regular basis instead of the random thread by a random user at some random interval would probably encourage participation. Back when they were semi regular, I never participated because I was never sure when they were or which time zone, etc.

And maybe a feature of the weekly winner linked from scirra front page. It would be good to attract attention to construct as well,since the idea of a 1 hr competition with any other game creation tool is utterly ridiculous

This is just a standard phpBB installation, I don't know if the customisations you describe are possible. I don't really have time/care to fiddle with the forum, it does the job and works pretty well imo.

Competitions are a good idea, but I don't have much time to organise or judge anything. Perhaps someone could volunteer to run weekly or monthly competitions? I'm happy to give you 'official' endorsement (whatever official means for a guy sitting in his bedroom on a laptop anyway).

Actually the installation could use a bit of maintenance.

View active topics http://www.scirra.com/forum/search.php?search_id=active_topics

has been messed up for months.

The last time I upgraded phpBB was three or four days of my life I'm not getting back while the forum was down. Frankly I'd rather not touch the thing for as long as humanly possible.

Out of about 5 or 6 forums that I regularly visit, this one is 1 of 2 that use restricted width, and I'm very glad that it does.

The full width forums are a nightmare to read as they are stretched across the full wide-screen width of your monitor.

I've even asked the other forums to change to a format like this, but to no avail.

So here's hoping that the width isn't messed with.

It's just more user-friendly as it is.

Regarding images being posted that disappear off the side of the forum, it's possible to have some forums automatically resize the images to a specified maximum for viewing in the forum, and to have it clickable to open up full-size in a new page.

As for Chat, I don't bother with chat on any forum.

It's just not something that interests me.

Krush.

It's fine how it is.

The last time I upgraded phpBB was three or four days of my life I'm not getting back while the forum was down. Frankly I'd rather not touch the thing for as long as humanly possible.

Yeah I can understand your position on this, as I'm sure most every one else does.

You have the project as topmost I guess, but eventually the forum will need a bit of "spicing up".

Perhaps someone with the expertise with phbb could do that for the site.