Is there a theme-map?

[Mynamehere]

I've been messing around with the theme files for a while now, and when I change code, the forum changes.... but not the way I intended it.

I am working from the classic theme, and editing that...

Okay... one image says more than 1000 words, so here goes...




Basically, I want the theme to match the site www.lekkerlezen.net

[IchBin™]

Mynamehere, I would highly suggest you download and install the firebug add-on. With this simple add-on you can highlight any part of the page, and it will tell you what CSS is associated with any element.

[steighan]

Firebug?? istnt that for Javascript?

Dont you mean the "WebDeveloper" extension?

[steighan]

oops...Firebug does BOTH Js and CSS...gotta check this out some more~

[IchBin™]

I actually use both of those. But for to do a quick edit or test some CSS I use Firebug.

[Mynamehere]

does this Firebug also tell me which file?

Where do I find it?

[IchBin™]

No, thats something you need to learn. But here's a quick explanation.

index.template.php - contains the header and footer of each page
Boardindex.template.php - is the main body page for the forum (lists all the boards)
Messageindex.template.php - main body of the page for the topic listing when inside a board
Display.template.php - is the main body of the page for viewing a topic (when viewing all the posts in a topic).

The rest of them should be pretty self explanatory. Profile, help, Calendar etc.

[steighan]

its harder than that tho.... Templating in SMF is a garbled,nasty mess... there are inline CSS and <style> all over the damn place, as well as external CSS and a sh*t load of TABLES/TR/TD tags...

you see all those SMF sites looking crappy...well, thats 1/2 the reason

good luck with that.

Your best bet - go through a 100 templates till you find one that looks closest to what you want/need... cross your fingers, then modify, whilst backing up all along.

Hope you really really like it, as u will be STUCK with it like a ***king Mother In Law

[IchBin™]

lmao... OK Steighan lets see, each view is separated. In other words each page in SMF has a template assigned to it. How its coded doesn't make it any harder. I found it very easy my first time to find things. While we agree we need a more semantic theme (its being worked on), is it really necessary for you to act so childish? If you don't like it so much, and you think its worse than your Mother in-law, why are you here? Save us all the time from reading your pointless posts, and don't let the door hit you on the way out.

[steighan]

Note: this post will not display until it's been approved by a moderator.

it may or may not have occurred to you that SMF is good *despite* it's flaws not because of them?

Perhaps if YOU had spoken up earlier in one of your more than 4,000 posts, then we would have been further along the path to a better structure?


My advice to him is not only sound, it's correct.

The problem isnt not only FINDING the stuff, its making the changes and not have anything break!

and also, since the FUNCTIONALITY is so intertwined with the DISPLAY, switching the visual appearance is a LOT HARDER than it has to be.

Oh - you also know of course that the modifications are oft added to the template, and if you are using any but the standard default template, they often dont work and have to be added manually??

again, the best thing for him to do is to find a template that looks and behaves  the closest to what he wants, prepare himself to DO WITHOUT what it doesnt do and go with that.
Anything else is an exercise in hair pulling.

If you see this post, then you can rest assured that a moderator agrees with me!

[SleePy]

How else are we supposed to do something if we don't generate a way for it to be outputted?

In general when making a theme you should edit as little stuff as possible and focus on editing the style.css as much as possible for the changes. This has been improved in SMF 2.0 with more CSS and hopefully no inline css at all. As well as semantic coding is being applied.
Things are being changed, it just takes a while.

I haven't found the Theming styling in SMF to be hard. In fact when I started with it, I actually found it nice and would myself do inline css or straight attributes such as bgcolor

There is no reason to be attacking, Yes the xHTML used in SMF 1.0 and 1.1 is old, but they where using the old standards. SMF 2.0 is following more of the newer standards.

As well in 2.0, mods have an option of being installed for multiple themes (Though only check the box on that theme if there are no errors).
It would be nice to see SMF move towardsa a more MVC approach or similar and having lot more hooks just for mod authors. This meaning the only thing a mod would need to do is call a hook and it would work.

Bashing team members isn't going to get you anyfurther. We are trying to help and willing to spend our free time to give you advice, tips and other help for you to create your work. To come here and have somebody attacking somebody because they are finding the process of creating a theme hard work, is just very insulting. This gives me the impression you don't like to spend much time on things and expect them to instantly work the way you wanted them to.
I have sometimes spent hours programing very complicated scripts, and even after trial and error had issues getting them working right. Some of these scripts where with SMF and some of them where my own standalone work. The whole point is, things didn't work as I expected and had to spend many hours figuring out the issues and the best possible solutions.

The templates in SMF are designed so we are only using what we need. We are not including everything and only using a little bit of stuff, we are including just the files we need. Such as for board index, in SMF 1.1 you are getting just the index.php, BoardIndex.php, index.template.php and BoardIndex.template.php. Thats better than including all of those templates and source files in one big file and working with that.

[IchBin™]

it may or may not have occurred to you that SMF is good *despite* it's flaws not because of them?

Yeah, thats the best way to tell people you like the software. I think this software sucks because of this and that etc, but I still think its good! You really think people are getting anything positive out of that?

Perhaps if YOU had spoken up earlier in one of your more than 4,000 posts, then we would have been further along the path to a better structure?

My advice to him is not only sound, it's correct.

Nobody is saying your advice is wrong. We are telling you to leave the vulgar disrespectful comments at the door.

The problem isnt not only FINDING the stuff, its making the changes and not have anything break!

and also, since the FUNCTIONALITY is so intertwined with the DISPLAY, switching the visual appearance is a LOT HARDER than it has to be.

Thats actually the strength of having PHP templates. You can do so much more with the dynamics of it. There is no problem finding stuff, unless you are totally new at this. In which case, no matter what forum software you're using its the same.

Oh - you also know of course that the modifications are oft added to the template, and if you are using any but the standard default template, they often dont work and have to be added manually??

So what do you expect? SMF to magically read every themes custom code? At least there is a package manager, unlike other systems that you have to manually add everything.

again, the best thing for him to do is to find a template that looks and behaves  the closest to what he wants, prepare himself to DO WITHOUT what it doesnt do and go with that.
Anything else is an exercise in hair pulling.

And that is different from other forum software?

If you see this post, then you can rest assured that a moderator agrees with me!

You can rest assured that your moderation has nothing to do with your opinions, its only to do with the disrespectful way in which you choose to handle yourself. There's no need to swear or defame anything on these boards. Continuing down that path will only lead to your dismissal on this site.

[[unplugged]]

A quick newbie perspective:

Out of 5 or 6 other "leading" forum softwares, SMF is by far the easiest to open up, modify, and otherwise extensively customize than any of the others. Those "crappy looking" SMF sites tend to have more to do with their creators than with the original code itself. I should know, I hacked mine into some Frankenforums on more than one occasion. But the misplaced <td>'s and unneeded <div>'s and <span>'s were always my doing. I can barely even spell PHP. Yet with the miserably scarce coding knowledge I have, I have managed to construct a farely professional looking site.

In a nutshell......SMF is newbie friendly.

[subzcero]

is that "farely professional looking site" the one in your sig?

I dunno, those templates are hard for me to modify w/o a bunch of errors also I like to look at the free ones, but would love to have a selection of PAY templates to go througj as it is too much work for me. better to pay a good person than do my messing around

[[unplugged]]

Yes, I am referring to the one in my sig. That's all through trial and error (mostly error  ). And really not too many theme modifications other than some minor rearranging, and a total image makeover...

[IchBin™]

subzcero, there are a few paid theme places that do themes. Bloc, one of the Developers here has a site where he sells some themes, and also has some great free ones. www.tinyportal.net. Oh and an affiliated site of that is www.tinyportalmedia.com where there are more clan type templates.

Your site looks great SunKing. I bet most people wish they could have errors as bad as that.

[Deaks]

also smfthemes.org offer free and paid themes (in association with tpm )