Hello there, it's me again. Seems it's been a little quiet around here and we've had no new XSI Tech Joomla templates for awhile now.

Well it's a good time to get things rolling again in the free template dept. There are a whole heap of templates ready to go, but hey what's the rush. I like things to be near perfect as possible before I throw them out for everyone to use and sometimes find it hard to decide when a template is really finished.

Now in case you didn't notice yet, or have just visited XSI Tech for the first time, the site design has changed slightly, I hope it's better, I still can't decide.. Hope I didn't just waste my time. I made this new template and called itOrion, after that awesome Orion Nebula background picture up top that I shot back in the days when I worked for NASA. ;)

I noticed the forum now works a lot better with this new updated template in firefox, especially when large images are posted. The horizontal scrolling is screwed up in IE, but works nicely in FF.

I started testing the Agora forum component for Joomla this week, because Fireboard bugs just bug me a little. I was thinking of switching to Agora Forum instead of using fireboard if I can manage to convert my site template. Looks like a hundred more files to work with compared to Fireboard to figure out what and where to edit. Oh joy. Some of the Agora default templates look great so maybe I'll just use one of those in the meantime. VB style was my favorite template I tested out.

The main difference in the new XSI Tech Orion Joomla template is it's all now 100% CSS based layout, unlike the old one which was mostly a hybrid tables based layout with some CSS sprinkles to make it mega tastier. I still don't know what's worse though, using CSS or Tables... they are both a pain in the @$$ in some way.

Also, if that's not enough so far, there is a problem with the configuration of the sh404SEF component , because on multiple page forum threads I only noticed recently the page 1 link wouldn't work properly.,But I found a couple of work arounds. Rename the first page of the thread to end with page 1 if you can get to it lol, or go to the Forum section index and click on the link of the thread. If you tried to click on the page 1 link from page 4 it would go to page 2 instead.. crazy I know.

Another bug I had with the new XSI Tech Orion template was with Virtumart's default theme.css conflicting with my template CSS and breaking it in IE in a major way, so I had to get rid of Virtuemart until I fully sort that problem out. Took me a little while to even track it down to the last line of code in the virtuemart CSS file.. It looked to be a simple clear float conflict that I thought I fixed, but I have to sleep now and I'll worry about it another day.

So anyway, enough rambling on... No wait, just a little more. I hope you like the new look of the site, it was time for a change and something a little more colorful than all black.. But still I kept some of the black gloss parts from the old template and just got rid of the stuff I didnt like, because I am a black gloss addict.. Can't get enough of it.. :D

If you find any more bugs with the site please post on the forum, or just post to say hi. I probably won't bite you on the forum, but if I do I promise not to leave any long lasting teeth marks.

Yes it's a little early for christmas presents, but I know you have been really good [ or as good as you can be, I know you tried ] so I decided to update the site as a present to all of my awesome members and guests visiting the site... Don't say I never gave you anything. Bye bye.