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Ryokotsusai
Posts: 248
Joined: 10/5/2005
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Free forums that are easy to template? - 4/12/2008 9:26:42
Hello,
I am looking for a forum setup that is easy to template, and I would prefer that it is free. It is for something I am doing, and in this case phpBB won't work (There is a major bug that they can't seem to fix that prevents the admin from getting to the CP).
I have looked into SMF and that looks like its a nightmare to adjust the template. So I was wondering how many other free forums are there, that can compete with phpBB and SMF in features, and are easy to adjust the templates?
< Message edited by Ryokotsusai -- 4/12/2008 9:32:15 >
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Tailslide
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RE: Free forums that are easy to template? - 4/12/2008 9:49:56
SMF has a big following (including Womble). I like PunBB but it's less fancy - some bits are add-ons rather than built in (like private messaging).
Vanilla is also nice - fairly clean code, but very simple in design - possibly not what most people think of when they think of a forum.
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jurgen
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RE: Free forums that are easy to template? - 4/12/2008 11:39:19
I don't think that SMF is to terrible to change the template. Most colors and fonts can easily changed with the style sheet only. Images and backgrounds are also pretty easy to handle. There are a ton of themes available. However, you might run in problems with occasional updates using a different theme. Stick with the default theme and modify those templates.
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Ryokotsusai
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RE: Free forums that are easy to template? - 4/12/2008 13:05:48
quote:
I use SMF as well. I found it was miles easier to template than phpBB
I must have been doing something wrong then, I couldn't make heads or tails of the template file. Maybe it's 'cause I learned with an IPB layout XP I'll look at it again though
I thought it would be easier with one like phpbb because I need to change the whole structure of the forum, so it lines up with the way the rest of the site is set up, phpBB and IPB make it easy, as the templates are html files, and can be altered pretty much by copying and pasting the source of the page you want it to resemble.
quote:
SMF has a big following (including Womble). I like PunBB but it's less fancy - some bits are add-ons rather than built in (like private messaging).
Vanilla is also nice - fairly clean code, but very simple in design - possibly not what most people think of when they think of a forum.
I'll look into these if I still can't figure out SMF...
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womble
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RE: Free forums that are easy to template? - 4/13/2008 5:52:12
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. 
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. 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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), but it will be worth it in the end 
Cool! 