Designing vbulletin and movable type skin for a Christian fellowship?

Solid, practical guidance for a small fellowship site that uses a blog plus forum: keep the visual identity simple and consistent across both systems, prioritize readability and accessibility for all devices, and avoid heavy structural changes to core product files so upgrades stay possible. A tight scope and a small style guide will save hours during theme integration.

• Start checklist: define the target pages and required features (events, calendar, resources, membership); collect logo, hero images, and sample content; pick a 2–3 color palette and 1–2 web-safe fonts and verify contrast; set up a development/staging copy and version control; decide roles/permissions and a basic moderation workflow; choose which elements will be shared (single header, footer, CSS file).
• Development rules of thumb: implement design with template overrides or child styles rather than editing core templates; centralize layout and typography in one CSS file; optimize images and enable caching to keep the site responsive for mobile users; document every template change.

Implementation tips and a tiny starter CSS to unify layout and readable type:

/* base container + type */
.container {
  max-width: 980px;
  margin: 0 auto;
  padding: 0 12px;
}
body {
  font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
  font-size: 16px;
  line-height: 1.5;
}
@media (max-width:600px){
  body { font-size:15px; }
}

Operational cautions and volunteer tasks: keep regular backups before any theme change; test login/registration and permissions on the staging site; run quick accessibility checks (keyboard navigation, alt text, color contrast). Given @AICkieran’s offer to help, practical first tasks are: create a dev copy, build a minimal forum child-style, add a shared header/footer include for the blog, and produce the single CSS file that both systems reference.