How did you theme this forum ?

darumaki posted this at 17:08 — 21st July 2008.

They have: 1 posts

Joined: Jul 2008

I like the way you did your forum, how did you do it ?

Megan posted this at 18:54 — 21st July 2008.

Joined: Jun 1999

It's just a Drupal theme, really. We started with the grid_inspired theme and worked from there. After running a vBulletin forum for many years we had a lot of ideas about how we wanted to organize things in the new system.

If you have any more questions please ask us.

Megan
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RTFVerterra posted this at 13:32 — 19th January 2009.

He has: 109 posts

Joined: Dec 2008

Megan wrote:

If you have any more questions please ask us.

Hi Megan, I supposed to start a new thread but I found this one. I have some questions:

Your front page is http://www.webmaster-forums.net/forum instead of http://www.webmaster-forums.net/node, am I right?
You only enabled one Content Type that the community can contribute and that is Forum, am I right?
How to accomplish this one: The profile picture in the post together with some details is located to the left. I try Advance Forum module of Michelle but I dismiss it for a while. Your front page looks better than that, and I want and willing to create one. Just need some guidance on where and how to start.
How did you iconized the navigation links in the side bar and your home in the primary links above (below the site name) is an image, how did you do that?

I hope I am not too much. I am not a website developer by profession, just a hobbyist. This makes me ask a lot of things.

Civil Engineering Review

RTFVerterra posted this at 14:50 — 21st January 2009.

He has: 109 posts

Joined: Dec 2008

I am wrong in number 2. Other than the Forum content I also had the ability to create Poll and Project content types.

Megan posted this at 15:52 — 21st January 2009.

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

Hi rtfverterra,

I can answer some of those questions but not well. JeevesBond should be along soon to help you out. He's the one who set this all up.

My best:

Yes, it's set to /forum
Yes, users can submit forums, polls, and projects.
I'm not sure about the avatars. It's all our CSS in the theme that's displaying them but I'm not sure about how they are configured.
This is a CSS technique. Each link has a unique ID (not sure how that was put in), and then the CSS is applied to show the icon next to it. You can use Firebug to check that out. The icons are all in one image and positioned as a background next to each link.

We will be posting an article soon with more details on the modules we're using and how the forums are configured. There's a list of all the modules we're using here:

http://www.webmaster-forums.net/twf-feedback-and-announcements/forum-mod...

Megan
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JeevesBond posted this at 19:58 — 21st January 2009.

He has: 3,955 posts

Joined: Jun 2002

Firstly, are you looking Drupal 5 or Drupal 6? The theme system is subtly different across versions. We're using Drupal 5.

We're not using Advanced Forum, but studying it will give you a good idea of how we built these forums.

There's also the theme documentation. In particular you'll need to know about:

3. [...] The profile picture in the post together with some details is located to the left. [...] Your front page looks better than that, and I want and willing to create one.

Profile Picture

In your theme directory, make a copy of node.tpl.php called node-forum.tpl.php, then edit it to suit.

Drupal has user pictures built-in, all you have to do to insert them in your theme is put: <?php print $picture ?> in your node-forum.tpl.php.

Front Page

In the directory of your theme should be a file called template.php, if it's not there, create it. Then add this function to it:

<?php
/**
 * Implementation of theme_forum_list().
 */
function phptemplate_forum_list($forums, $parents, $tid) {
  return _phptemplate_callback('forum_list', array('forums' => $forums, 'parents' =>$parents, 'tid' =>$tid));
}
?>

This tells Drupal to look in a file called forum_list.tpl.php when theming the forum front page. Next, have a look at the Drupal API documentation, at the default forum front page theme code: http://api.drupal.org/api/function/theme_forum_list/5

You can copy and paste the code from that page to forum_list.tpl.php, which you'll need to create, in your theme directory. Then change the code to whatever you want, to test try putting something silly at the top of your forum list, such as: <h1>OMG!!11!one It works!</h1>.

Good luck.

a Padded Cell our articles site!

RTFVerterra posted this at 13:30 — 22nd January 2009.

He has: 109 posts

Joined: Dec 2008

I am using Drupal 6.

Thank you very much for being helpful. And for the code, thanks. I hope you don't mind if I ask you again in the future.

If ever I can successfully implement these, let me post a link in this thread to show you my output, but it will be real slow, I have a day job and the site development is a one man show.

Civil Engineering Review

JeevesBond posted this at 20:35 — 21st January 2009.

He has: 3,955 posts

Joined: Jun 2002

4. How did you iconized the navigation links in the side bar

The answer to this is in a Google search, you just need to know what to ask.

Try this: http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=drupal+unique+id+on+m...

That gets you a unique id for each menu item. Then just set a CSS background image (check out how we've done this using Firebug, as Megan said).

[...] and your home in the primary links above (below the site name) is an image, how did you do that?

Not sure what you mean here, do you mean the swirly graphic on the left?

a Padded Cell our articles site!

RTFVerterra posted this at 13:24 — 22nd January 2009.

He has: 109 posts

Joined: Dec 2008

Thanks for the search link, it really helps.

JeevesBond wrote:

do you mean the swirly graphic on the left?

Yes, that's what I mean, but I think the answer is also Firebug.

Civil Engineering Review

RTFVerterra posted this at 06:06 — 25th January 2009.

He has: 109 posts

Joined: Dec 2008

Hi guys, thank you all for your help. I already made my forum site and TWF played a great role as my inspiration. The site is not yet live and I disallow all robots from accessing my site. Still under development but it's almost done, so I think it is now appropriate to post a link here.

The overall concept of the site interface is the same as TWF. I am not ready to post the link to the Website Critique Area, so allow me to post it here.

Here is my link
http://www.mathalino.com/mathalino-forums

I am not accepting members for now, and the primary links won't work for I did not create a subdomains for the links.

Civil Engineering Review

greg posted this at 09:21 — 25th January 2009.

He has: 1,581 posts

Joined: Nov 2005

Congrats! Especially with having a day job, can be tough coming home after work and getting stuck into a large project!

Looks good so far. Commenting on a working project is difficult as people might mention things you are already aware of.
Like the blue boxes on the right, "Active Forum Topics" and "navigation" etc, could do with being organised a little better to be tidier.

Perhaps have the login as horizontal so it fits above the main forum listings area but is still to the right of it (would perhaps need smaller text and input boxes to make it fit), then have the other boxes neatly stacked down the right hand side where they are now, but lined up just under the main form listing on the left.

Having the login like that would be good as on the actual forums where posts are, those blue boxes change slightly, having the login at least static and always the same size and location is good imo.

And don't forget to check spellings