CHAPTER 12 (My web server) STYLING PHPBB 365 You may
CHAPTER 12 STYLING PHPBB 365 You may want to force a default theme if you wish to maintain only one template for your site. Also, you may wish to enable this option if your phpBB is well integrated into your site, or you have hacks that you ve installed for your default template and not in any others. This way, you can ensure an optimum viewing experience for your community. Touring phpBB 3.0 Templating Improvements phpBB 3.0 introduces a few improvements to templating. A smarter and more flexible templating engine provides even more customization possibilities, with far fewer dives into the PHP scripting code required a winning situation in terms of reliability and efficiency in development. The downside to these improvements is that existing phpBB 2.0 styles are considered totally incompatible with phpBB 3.0, and they will need to be reworked to accommodate the new version s changes. Caution The information in this section at the time of this writing is based on prerelease software and is subject to change at any time. For template designers, a lot has changed, and for the better. Here s a list of the new things you ll be able to accomplish with phpBB 3.0: Use conditional structures: Potentially the biggest reason to switch to phpBB 3.0, from a designer s perspective, is the ability to use conditional structures, commonly known as if statements, directly in the templating engine. This will give designers unprecedented flexibility in customizing their templates without needing to touch a single line of raw PHP. This also benefits people working inside the core phpBB code, as virtually all of the formatting has been offloaded onto the templating engine. Previously, there was some work being done by the PHP script, but this is no longer the case. This is the landmark feature of the phpBB 3.0 template system, without a doubt. Embed PHP: The phpBB Group has added the option to embed PHP code inside a template, which is welcome news to people who run ad-rotation code and other scripts inside their phpBB installation. Previously, these users had to edit the codebase and add a template variable to output the results of their scripts, and then edit their templates and add the template variable. While the phpBB Group still recommends that you use the template variables, as they will be fastest, the INCLUDEPHPdirective will permit you to bring in PHP files from the outside. Or, you can declare a PHP block and execute a few lines directly inside the block. Either way, the flexibility is very nice. Add common elements easily: Thanks to the new INCLUDE directive, templates are now able to include other template files directly. Previously, a great number of code hacks were required. Some operational changes also impact designers. One is that phpBB 3.0 templates now use a standard .html extension instead of the .tpl extension. This helps people avoid having to set up their editors to do syntax highlighting on the .tpl files. The new extension also helps
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