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Jaysyn @kbin.social

Why is no one decorating their magazines?

Why is no one using CSS to make their magazine's visual appearances more unique? That was the main draw of old Reddit for me.

(I mean I am, but that is why I asked)

84 comments

  • So you'd need mods who (1) came over, (2) believe in the platform, (3) believe in the instance, (4) want to do custom CSS, (5) know how to do custom CSS, (6) are willing to put for the effort for a readership that's still fairly small, and (7) feel that the odds of a change that will break their CSS are low.

    That's a tall stack of filters, and you may not have a lot of company yet on the other side of it. /m/neverwinternights looks really nice, though. Well done!

  • I appreciate you putting in the effort, but it looks kinda scuffed on mobile

    • Need to figure out how to scale the background to the display, apparently.

      EDIT: I think I fixed that. Now to fix my other magazines.

  • A majority can't even be bothered to post anything in their magazines.

  • I'm just waiting for things to shake out before I start going crazy with CSS.

    This website's CSS is more complex than Old Reddit's, and people can easily apply different themes. Without a checkbox to turn CSS off, I can easily break my magazines for others.

  • I got some basic theming set up at my magazine after looking up what CSS is.

    • Nice gradient!

    • Can you share your code for that? It looks really good! If you're okay with it, I'd like to copy it and tweak a bit for my own magazine.

      • Edit: Added a comment and updated the option bar to match the navbar.
        Sure, here you go! I've never done anything like this before so it's probably a formatting disaster, but I've done my best to clean it a bit and add some comments about what does what here. This is what I've come up with after a few hours of just poking around with the inspect element feature and reading some tutorials:

        / Navbar /
        header {
        background: linear-gradient(to top right, rgba(229, 0, 32, .8) , rgba(242, 151, 57, .8));
        box-shadow: 0px 4px 10px 1px rgba(0,0,0,0.5);
        backdrop-filter: blur(10px);
        position: relative; z-index: 4001
        }

        / Page background image /
        middle {
        background: url(https://toaru-project.com/railgunt/coresys/images/main/common/logot.svg) no-repeat center center fixed;
        background-size: contain;
        }

        / Post box transparency /
        .section {
        opacity: 0.96;
        }

        / kbin footer background /
        footer {
        background: linear-gradient(to top right, rgba(229, 0, 32, 1) , rgba(242, 151, 57, 1));
        }

        / The little arrow button in the bottom right that takes you back to the top of the page /
        scroll-top {
        background: linear-gradient(to top right, rgba(229, 0, 32, .8) , rgba(242, 151, 57, .8));
        box-shadow: 0px 4px 10px 1px rgba(0,0,0,0.5);
        backdrop-filter: blur(10px);
        }

        / Options bar /
        options {
        background: linear-gradient(to top right, rgba(229, 0, 32, .8) , rgba(242, 151, 57, .8));
        box-shadow: 0px 4px 10px 1px rgba(0,0,0,0.25);
        backdrop-filter: blur(10px);
        position: relative
        }

        / upvote color /
        .vote .active.voteup button {
        color: rgba(242, 151, 57);
        }

        / Media viewer background blur /
        .goverlay {
        background: rgba(0,0,0,.5);
        backdrop-filter: blur(15px);
        }

    • Looks good!

  • Because kbin is still new for most people, and the more dedicated moderators are still clinging to their other dieing site.

  • Probably because most people don't know how to use CSS and there isn't much resources for beginners.

  • I did it, waiting for the results. Still new to CSS, but I used ChatGPT and it worked pretty well.

  • I played around with it but honestly it's a bit of a nightmare to support given all the different Kbin user themes and the differences between desktop and mobile. Kbin is also not stable in the sense that new changes are expected and new themes are still being added. I figured I'd wait until it stabilized and/or until someone came up with a decent design you can easily plug and play.

  • I didn't even realize that was possible here! I'm definitely going to look into it now, but I also have no idea how CSS works.

  • As a magazine having a custom CSS isn't important for whether I decide to interact with a community, I'm much more focused on other methods of gathering an audience and activity which isn't just me posting over and over.

  • I did not know that is was possible. Maybe I will play around with it but I am kinda afraid of making everything ugly.

  • I'm a mod. My subreddit (kbin.social/m/bestof) will not get a facelift any time soon, I don't think. Aren't people expecting to customize their own view of all communities?

    Also, do the visuals persist to all of the fediverse? How does your community look on kbin, lemmy, etc?

  • I have /m/learnesperanto and I am slowly working on sprucing up the CSS. So far all I’ve really done is add a green bottom border to some link hovers in the sidebar.

84 comments