Minimal theme?

[memo]

Hello all! I was trying out the few themes the site offers, and I was curious to ask if there's any plan to add a clean, minimal theme to the list. I know the main theme's purpose is to evoke creativity and uniqueness, but it is sometimes hard to focus on what's going on/what's been written (expecially while I'm browsing the website and I'm a bit tired); a more accessible theme would do wonders for whoever feels this may be a tad overwhelming.

The newspaper theme has a glowy neon bar all around, togheter with an ever-changing (on refresh) background. It also has a strongly opinionated thread view. The MelonLand 98 is just the usual theme, without extra blinkies and backgrounds.

[KrazyKoen]

You could try the the WAP version of the forum (can also be found at the bottom of the page). It might be a little TOO minimalist depending on your taste.

[ヤーナム]

generally i'm a big fan of the presentation here, the only thing about the melonforumz that I find hard to parse is all the differing fonts. but having the default SMF theme available wouldn't be the worst thing, sometimes you just need a little break!

anyway if you don't already have it, the Stylus Firefox extension lets you set your own CSS for any page. I added a simple rule that overrides the font:

Code

* {
    font-family: "Anonymous Pro" !important;
}

[TeaInTheMorning]

Hello all! I was trying out the few themes the site offers, and I was curious to ask if there's any plan to add a clean, minimal theme to the list. I know the main theme's purpose is to evoke creativity and uniqueness, but it is sometimes hard to focus on what's going on/what's been written (expecially while I'm browsing the website and I'm a bit tired); a more accessible theme would do wonders for whoever feels this may be a tad overwhelming.

The newspaper theme has a glowy neon bar all around, togheter with an ever-changing (on refresh) background. It also has a strongly opinionated thread view. The MelonLand 98 is just the usual theme, without extra blinkies and backgrounds.

Hard agree here! I like the creativity of this forum (esspecally that main theme), but I'm personally easily overstimulated especcially on a rough day
(I won't really notice it when it happens, but I tend to just drop the overstimulating activity even if it's what I wanted to be doing, in this case, checking the forum)

I would stay on this forum for significantly longer periods if there was some compromise between the WAP and base theme (not quite WAP simple, but with less chaos than the main themes :3

I know a lot of phpbb forums enable the default theme (or something closely based on it) as an option, does this software have a default theme that could be enabled for accessibility? I wonder if a similar thing can be done here (different software, but I assume a base theme exists?)

Another personal issue is I find dark themes hard on the eyes, and the light themes both have massive issues (one is way to low contrast making it very hard to use, the other has distracting background swapping whenever you switch the page!)

[Memory]

I hope this can be implemented as well. Also I'm not sure if this is sitewide or something that can actually be set but I just noticed that the newspaper theme has been changed to be a dark mode theme too. The light blue theme is too low-contrast for me to see so I hope the previous light theme gets put back as an option, if a new light theme won't be added in its stead.

[ribose]

the Stylus Firefox extension lets you set your own CSS for any page.

seconding this recommendation! (there's a chrome and opera version of the extension too, if you use one of those) i love to adjust the CSS of sites i visit to suit my own tastes.

The newspaper theme has a glowy neon bar all around, togheter with an ever-changing (on refresh) background.

to change this with the stylus extension, add the following CSS:

Code

html {
    background: thistle /* or a different color you like more */ !important;
    background-image: none !important;
}
div#wrapper {
    border: 1px solid;
    box-shadow: unset;
}

colors, fonts, margins... you can change anything!

everyone in this topic may also be interested in the forum adjustments that @sen.fish made, which you can find on userstyles.world.

I just noticed that the newspaper theme has been changed to be a dark mode theme

the newspaper theme has both a light and a dark mode. the version you see depends on your device/browser settings.

[Memory]

@loren I see, thank you for letting me know! So weird for mine to have been set to dark mode when nothing in my browser changed but it's back to normal after closing and reopening the browser so must've just been some fluke.

[mir]

I'm adding onto this thread to add to the visibility of demand for a minimal (and light mode) theme. Particularly, I'm asking for variety since I also have some qualms with the designated readability-focused theme of melonland which is Newspaper.

tldr: Newspaper needs major improvement as a "readability-focused" theme @_@

I have been using the Newspaper theme since the birth of my account mainly because I have strong difficulties reading in dark mode. however as it seems, Newspaper is no longer exactly "recommended". Upon my return to this forum this 2026, I noticed the theme switcher on the sidebar only has the Default, Aqua Dream and MelonLand 98 as the options. I clicked on these orbs out of curiosity and having not been able to read the label "Forum Theme Picker" (additional note: the sidebar remains hard to navigate despite Newspaper's more minimal theme) and I sort of panicked thinking I just lost the Newspaper theme for good, seeing as it was none of the three options. Thankfully it was still in the Profile under Looks & Layout.

It should be noted that Newspaper not only changes the colors of the website, but also the presentation of certain things like the dimensions and positions of textboxes. I never found it intuitive to go through the forum boards on Newspaper and a lot of the text, especially on the header, registers more as clutter that I tend to just ignore, when ideally I believe a minimal theme should encourage the opposite tendencies. I understand that by being minimal it makes sense that some elements are tucked away, but comparing Newspaper to the default layouts, these so-called distracting texts don't distract me at all. I would much rather have the layout of the default theme since I feel the elements are positioned in a more sensible way and feel less cluttered due to the good amount of negative space. Furthermore, I notice the main nav that is the row of icons labelled "Profile, Art, Guilds, etc." and a lot of other things has been tucked away into tiny 50 by 50 pixels on the sidebar, of which design and color choices communicate "unrelated popup ad" than an actual part of the forum from which some pages are only accessible through by.

biggest sin of all: the forum board directories themselves. I get that it's a "newspaper" and as such it's cheekily formatted in columns and rows, but for a "readibility-focused" theme, it's very, very cluttered and hard to read.


Default theme


Newspaper theme

as you can see, more text has ended up on the screen on Newspaper due to each thread individually having its own fields for "started by/date, replies, views, last post". To view these data, the user's eyes has to jump up down left right across boxes. compare this to the Default theme's organized columns that keep all the information in neat boxes without repetitive labels. and finally, Newspaper's boxy formatting doesn't even display the thread's full name, forcing users to have to click on the thread, wait for it to load, and only then can they see if the thread is relevant to them or not.

perhaps these are some reasons why Newspaper isn't included in the theme switcher in the sidebar, however that makes zero good light mode readability themes for MelonLand. While Aqua Dreams is a light mode theme that might suit my needs, its palette is irritatingly neon and its color choices fail the WebAIM contrast checker test. I argue it is worse than Newspaper.

I have tried Sen's MelonLand Forum userstyles but it is not enough, and causes lots of other visual issues.

As someone who wishes to replace instant messaging with forums for fulfilling my online social interaction needs, and having been loyal to melonland for about three years now (hard to keep active when the forum is hard on the eyes)(edit: I don't mean to sound like an entitled customer with this part; just wanted to express my commitment to melonland :P) since the community and topics here are just so good, I am urging MelonLand to provide an officially supported theme that is actually readable and easy to use. I hope this resonates with the people here despite this forum seemingly having been built on the aesthetics of the old web, since I believe inclusivity and accessibility is necessary for the free web's survival long into the future.

note: I understand my view of Newspaper may be different since my browser is zoomed in but my response is that the Default theme handles being zoomed in better than Newspaper.

and, additionally... is screen responsiveness too much to ask for?

I know forums go on the computer but phones aren't the only thing that screen responsiveness helps with

 

edit: fixed images?

update: I found MelonKing's statement about the forum's screen responsiveness, funnily a response to my own question from two years ago. screen responsiveness is a side to my main point in this post so I won't say any more.

[Melooon]

perhaps these are some reasons why Newspaper isn't included in the theme switcher in the sidebar

I dropped support for Newspaper this summer because.. more or less everything you said above  , in general it was never very good at being an accessible theme. Plus font toggling is now on all themes, so the key feature of Newspaper (not having custom fonts) is gone. Aqua Dream got a huge overhaul that took about two weeks and I realised Newspaper would need the same kind of work to bring it up to any kind of standard. Themes on this forum take up a ton of extra work because every time an edit is made to a feature, it often has to be added to each theme and/or retested and bugfixed in each separately, so having one less theme to keep up with is nice.

None of that solves your issue of course You listed a lot of good points, but you didn't directly say what you'd like done. (its not naggy to give me a list    I can't see what you see, so its very hard to guess what will work for you. Its really helpful to have a checklist of specific things I know I need to do! ideally with illustrations! )

Anyway, I think the main options are:

• Sen's MelonLand Forum userstyles - How does this one work for you? Would a significantly improved version that's baked into the forum be a solution? and if so what should it feature/remove? (This is the option I'd like since it means just doing a CSS overlay on the main theme rather than a new theme, that's vastly easier to manage!)
• Newspaper theme gets a big overhaul
• We do an entirely alternative minimal theme (this at least seems more fun than reworking Newspaper to undo its weird layout)

[mir]

You listed a lot of good points, but you didn't directly say what you'd like done.

sorry, I should have summarized my post better

Its really helpful to have a checklist of specific things I know I need to do! ideally with illustrations!

the option that's easiest to implement should be good enough. here are some stuff I think can be improved based on sen's userstyle. something like a recolor of the default theme is what I was expressing desire for in my previous post

in these photos I'm using Sen's userstyle over MelonLand 98 --- I think the ML 98 theme can be a good base







the dark header bars can be a light gray to accentuate it more without making it distracting. the borders for the boxes can be black, and the horizontal rules can be a lower contrast shade of dark gray, similar to how the hr in the base theme is a lower contrast cyan that makes sure it's visible but not attention grabbing, unlike the bright yellow borders that do a good job standing out on the dark background of ML 98.

for the background, personally I would like a white background like Newspaper, but have it consistent throughout the page's body rather than confined to little boxes over a bigger gray background. I would also appreciate the alternating backgrounds of the default themes to be carried over, which Sen's style doesn't. it can be a light gray, but lighter than the gray of the header bar if you choose to accentuate the header bar as per previous paragraph



as for the sidebar, I'm thinking maybe you can simplify it to look closer to this kind of navigation? but if not, then just making the sidebar match the light theme, and text and padding between elements bigger will be fine



thanks for this, melon! I hope I am able to get the necessary details across and that you can easily cover the other pages that I didn't picture.

[Cyan]

Plus font toggling is now on all themes, so the key feature of Newspaper (not having custom fonts) is gone.

For me personally, this is the main issue. I understand the fun of personalization but people tend to pick the most horrendous fonts and colours that honestly makes the forum very annoying to read.

If I could make a wish it would be: have a light-mode theme (i.e. dark text on light background) with no custom anything. Just give me one reasonably readable font in a reasonable size and colour used for all text. I don't care what the rest of the design looks like as long as it lets me read what people post without eyestrain.