Thread

I have just been looking at one of the Showroom websites and one of the sites has the forum integrated into the main content area of the page:

http://www.kidzthings.co.uk/forum

How is this done? 
Do you have to go into the php files that make up the Forum and selectively select / delete the code you need and then embed it into a template?

Many Thanks

Dave

I suspect there are a few ways (at least):

What would seem easiest is to run the EE forums through the standard template rendering engine. That way you have full access to all of EE’s tags in and around the forum code.

And I think it could also be done by modifying the EE forums template to fit the home page format.

I don’t think there is any other way to do this, other than doing as RonnieMc suggests and running the forum templates through the main EE template engine. There is a small section in the docs on how to do this.

http://expressionengine.com/docs/modules/forum/other_features.html

If you read the docs, you will see that it is not really recommended as it potentially increases load on your server. If you had a very busy forum, this would probably not be the best idea.

I’ve also just noticed for the first time there is a tag available to standard EE templates (ie: not forum templates) which lists recent forum posts.

http://expressionengine.com/docs/modules/forum/recent_forum_topics.html

If you read the docs, you will see that it is not really recommended as it potentially increases load on your server. If you had a very busy forum, this would probably not be the best idea.

I stayed away from running EE’s forums through the templates rendering engine on a couple sites for that very reason. Then I tried it out because the allure of using EE’s tags in the forums was too much.

It works. We have not been able to tell a difference in forums page load times with or without running forums through the templates rendering engine. I suspect that there’s a potential hit on the server load if the forums are very busy, but we haven’t see it yet.

Two words: hardware matters.

That said, one thing we did before making the change was to remove EE forum’s CSS from the forums templates and make it a static file. About half of a typical forums page is CSS, which never got cached (forums pages are usually not cached). Now it’s a static CSS file which is subject to browser caching.

How is this done? 
Do you have to go into the php files that make up the Forum and selectively select / delete the code you need and then embed it into a template?

Not exactly. You have to modify forum templates, not php files.
I’ve just added a forum to our EE Polish Community site. To make the layout of the forum similar to the layout of the homepage I started with the Minimalistic forum template and modified the css file and many of the templates of that group. It’s time-consuming but it’s possible.

Not exactly. You have to modify forum templates, not php files.

FWIW Department, EE’s forum templates are PHP files. The files are located in the /themes/forum_themes/theme_style directories as PHP files. If you use the Forum module to edit the theme files, of course, you won’t see the PHP code, so be careful what you edit, and always make a backup of the themes.

Sorry, my fault. It’s exactly as you write. The files are php files indeed, but when edited in the forum module you don’t see any php code. And this is a good point - you modify only EE variables and do not see/modify php code itself.

YOu can do this by modifying the forum templates. I’m actually about to start a new venture where I will skin your forum to match your site for you. The premise is essentially the same as the various psd 2 html sites popping up over the last year,except it’s more niche focusing only on ExpressionEngine forums.

If you’re interested in learning more go visit http://eeforums4you.com - I’m not live yet, but you can sign up to the mailing list to be notified of when we launch.

My site matches / skins the forum to be seamlessly integrated with the main install without running through EE template engine. See here.

That’s a whole different way. The way that it’s done above is allowing them to use ee tags and call other areas of the site. The integration you did doesn’t do that, the skin just matches the main site, and uses the same navbar. Everything linked in your pages are forum topics and forum related. there’s a big difference. The point (unles I’m misunderstanding) is that running the forum through the template engine allows you to use regular ee tags anywhere in your pages on the forum as well.

Although, I should mention i really like your site design and i really like your forum skin. very well done.