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womble -> RE: Free forums that are easy to template? (4/13/2008 5:52:12)
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It depends what you're wanting to do with the template. I don't alter the template at all in that I don't move things around or install new themes onto SMF. All I use is the default template and swap out the graphics and play with the CSS - sometimes I don't even need to play with the CSS - just swapping out the graphics is enough to do it.
If there's a specific bit of the template you want to move or don't want to display, the best thing's to ask over at the SMF forums - usually the experts around there are pretty good at giving clear instructions on what to take out/add in/comment out etc. For example getting rid of the info box, or not displaying the avatar at the top of the page are easy to do once you know where to comment out.
Of course your other alternative's to find a template you do like and then hack the hell out of that, rather than the default theme. I've done that as well. I once had one where I needed a bit more than the standard template, so I found a theme I liked in terms of it having bits where I wanted them on the page, but I didn't like the colour scheme, which of course meant some of the little graphics then needed swapping out too. Opened up the theme's associated graphics in PSP and set to retexturing and re-colouring them to suit my site, swapped out the graphics, and stuck a footer on the bottom that said "Theme hacked about by Wombley based on the XXXXX theme by XXXXX" or words to that effect, and it was good to go. [:D]
Another forum I'm a member of uses the default theme, with some tweaks to the CSS but uses a photo for the top of the forum that goes behind the info/login box, with the elements of the top bit of the forum moved around strategically to not block any essential bits of the background image. Only that small part of the screen has been touched - the rest's the default theme 'as is'. Even without getting into messing about with PHP, tweaking the default theme the possibilities are endless. Just post over at SMF with an idea of what you're trying to acheive and either link to an example of a forum that does something like you're wanting to do, or post a screenshot of a default install annotated with stuff like "lose this", "move this over there", "change this background", and the guys will be able to show you the easiest way of accomplishing it without having to become an expert in PHP. The SMF community I've found is way more friendly than the phpBB community and I've always had some sort of answer to my queries there within 48 hours max, and even if it's not the full answer, it's been enough to get me started in figuring out how to do it, but generally I've found that if I've had a partial answer and then gone off and figured out the rest myself, a week or so later one of the mods or development team'll post on the thread again and ask if I've got the issue, whatever it was, resolved. 9 times out of 10 I'm able to say, "Ooops! My bad. I forgot to mark the topic as solved - thanks for your help", but if I'm still having problems they'll continue to help me work through it until I do get it nailed.
Yeah, okay so I'm a SMF fangirl and I won't have a word said against 'em. [:D] Believe me though, when I was first looking to move away from phpBB though, I installed tests of just about every forum system going, and it became very clear before I'd even really looked into most of the others in great detail that SMF had all the features I needed without bells and whistles I didn't, and offered the easiest way to customise it. Of course I'm always open to persuasion, but...[;)]
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