362 CHAPTER 12 STYLING PHPBB Getting Help
362 CHAPTER 12 STYLING PHPBB Getting Help with Templates As you ve seen, the phpBB template engine gives you a great deal of flexibility in styling just about every aspect of your community. For people just getting started with theming phpBB, having all these options can be overwhelming. You might run into problems or have questions on how to further expand the use of the template engine on your site. As always, the phpBB community is ready and willing to help you out when you run into problems. Try the resources at sites such as phpBBStyles.com, which specializes in creating templates for phpBB. Often, sites like these contain extensive tutorials, tips, and tricks for templating your board. Naturally, they also have forums for discussion and help on creating themes. Sites like these often have showcases for getting feedback on templates, which is especially useful if you are considering releasing the template to the public. phpBB.com and phpBBHacks.com also provide extensive support for template authors, with similar information available on both sites. The support is out there don t be hesitant to use it! Installing and Using Themes Whether you downloaded your theme from the Internet or created it from scratch, the next step is to get it installed to the phpBB database so the script actually knows how to use it. As with a lot of features in phpBB, the process is straightforward, making for a smooth transition. Adding Templates and Styles to phpBB Adding new themes to your board is as simple as extracting the theme to your hard drive, uploading the resulting folder, and selecting it from a list in the Administration panel. Here s how to do exactly that. Preparing to Install the Theme In most cases, you ll receive your templates in the form of a compressed file of some kind (usually a .zip file). You ll want to extract the contents of the compressed file to its own temporary folder, so you can upload it to the server. Make sure you enable the option to keep the paths of the folders intact (which your archive extraction program will usually have enabled by default). This will help you immensely when uploading to the server. After you ve extracted the files, you should see a folder with the name of the theme. Open that folder to see what s inside. Ideally, you will see a bunch of files with a tpl extension. Try to find a file that bears the name of the folder with a cfgextension. For example, if the folder s name is SnazzyTheme, you will want to locate SnazzyTheme.cfg, with the case and spelling (except for the file extension) identical to the folder name. Next, open theme_info.cfg in any text editor and make sure you set the template name variable (the first one) to the name of the folder. This step ensures that phpBB will pick up the theme in its installer utility. Prepackaged themes generally have these bases covered, but it never hurts to double-check, as it can save you some troubleshooting time later. If you find problems with a theme, make sure you notify the theme s author so he can fix the theme and redistribute it.
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