Hey all,

So I have spent alot of time building a template system for the content part of my website and I have been using phpbb for my forum and another program for my social site. Now I just learned about the member manager module and was taking a look at it and thinking about switching over completely to EE for the social site and the forum, but I will have to do it in phases.

So my questions is, if I spend all this time setting up a members template system and then later on, buy the forum module and convert my phpbb forum, will the members module work with the forum module?

Also, how hard is it to customize the members area, I noticed a LOT of different templates, but haven’t really looked at each. Are they all controlled via one css, or will i have to edit each template? Has anyone done this and is it a really tough job?

thanks

Adam

The forum shares the same core membership as EE standard- so, for example, Forum permissions are assigned to the existing EE member groups. 

That said- the forum does have its own separate member templates.  Most folks that use the forum- particularly if they customize things- choose one set of template to run the member frontend from.  On this site?  The membership list/cp/etc. is all handled via the forum member themes.  Others have used the standard themes universally- the forum script even has a configuration: var $use_site_profile   = FALSE; - which can be used to make the forum use the ‘standard’ profile urls, directing links through the base member links rather than the forum ones.

I personally prefer the forum member profiles for one reason- you can turn php processing on for them- which can add some nice flexibility.

As to customizing either set of member themes- the base profile theme uses a single css- as does the forum profile theme.  So- if all you need to do is tweak colors, swap out some images, etc?  It’s easily done.  More extensive customizations?  Can be tedious.  As you note- there are a lot of template parts, and tags that work in one template may not work in a different template.  Also- keep in mind that standard EE variables and tags won’t necessarily work in the member templates (you can’t just use an {embed} for example).  So- the difficulty really depends on the extent of the change you want to make.

That help?

And I may shift this one up to ‘General’ since it’s a little broad for tech support.

Hey Robin & Adam,
Nice post and inline with some of my latest quests.
Is there a reverse switch in site themes to force using forum member templates?
Or is reaching for .httaccess the best way to ‘hide’ member templates?
eg.

Thanks for your thoughts!