Thread

Can anyone share a really good resource on how to create a theme (or would it be skin?) for the forums? Also what is the best place to look for forum themes? I’m new to EE and just in case if anyone needs this info, I’m running Discussion Forum v3

How would I go about including the forum into my already created web template?

You’ve embarked on a Mission from Hell.

I skinned a Forum last year to accommodate a regular site design and realized later that I was half-way through when I understood the peril: too late to turn back and no clear road ahead.

Logically, using <tables> for most of the layouts makes sense, as nearly every forum application in the market follows the “liquid” page model. After all, you can’t anticipate how much space a thread will require, or what sorts of file attachments posters will embed.

But I wasn’t at all logical and set about recoding elements of a sample theme to percentage-based widths using <div>s. Unless you’ve got a patient client and are charging hourly rates, don’t do it!

A forum application has too many inter-related pages, too many possible views, too many minor-but-expected features, and too many paths to test without full-on usability testing. Moreover, the application is all about Membership management as much as it about threaded entries and comments. There are a butt-load of minor pieces that make up the Member Console alone.

Further complicating things, this forum system is assembled from dozens and dozens of subtemplates that are maintained inside the Module, rather than along with external template files. You have to open every one of those suckers to determine whether they carry presentational implications for your design. And deciphering and de-clawing the CSS files hidden inside the module is a special treat: every little element that can be decorated on a <table> carries properties that cascade up and down the application—but you won’t know that until you’ve tested extensively.

In one of those acts of willful self-preservation common to women in child-birth, I’ve managed to put most of that experience behind me and no longer remember many of the details. But I do recollect seeing a short Knowledgebase or Wiki entry by Lisa Wess that outlined the essential files to tackle if you ever have to re-skin the Forum. Hunt or ask around; maybe somebody has a link.

In my experience making your forum look just like your website is next to impossible and certainly not worth all the trouble.  I have resorted to a simple header styling including the logo etc and changing basic colors and fonts to match the site.  Beyond that it is like Bob says a mission to hell.

sweet, wish I knew that before I bought the mod, do you think it would be better to buy http://www.invisionpower.com/products/board/

and just slap that into my template? I looked over their code and they use up to date web coding. By the way thank you both for your replies! I sat down for a good 3 hrs over looking all 30 folders, all the html files, the HUGE css html file that gets spammed in my code. So far I love EE 2.0, but that forums mode just blows.

Never used that forum so i couldn’t comment on it.  You can of course run any forum along side your ee install.  Only thing to think about is the member functionality.  If you need members of your forum also to be members of ee for other purposes, it might be nice to have it all housed in one integrated setup.  Other than that i see no reason not to use whatever forum suits your needs.

There is also http://expressionengine.com/templates/forum_themes/ but I believe those are intended for the 2.x version not sure though so don’t quote me on it.

For what I need right now I don’t need the users to be members of the site over all, members to just the forum is fine for my site’s needs. Again if I knew going into this it would be this hard to skin the forums I would of went with some different software. I also checked out those templates and they are the same ones that come by default with the forums (30 folders of fun + a ton of HTML files).

guys, I haven’t got to doing my sites blog yet, but please tell me its going to be easier then dealing with this forum debauchery.

Blog applications are straightforward with EE, guru. You’ll be sailing with those templates in no time and there are plenty of people here who can help when you get stuck. The Community is the best part of EE.

@Phil:

If you need members of your forum also to be members of ee for other purposes, it might be nice to have it all housed in one integrated setup.

That’s what I thought, too. My application required Forum contributors to be able to post EE Gallery entries and to be approved via the standard EE Membership scheme. Also, the whole thing had to isolate them from the regular EE Control Panel, so I used Solspace’s User Module to rig “back-end” templates matching the site design.

It was the Forum that was a Bridge Too Far.

Great, thank you Bob 😊 I guess I’ll put the forums for now on the back burner and move forward with the blog.

In the Add-Ons > Modules do I install “Moblog” and “Blogger API”?

Or is it the Weblog that I need (sorry still new to this.)