Hi,
I would like to build the forums around my site design and dont know what files to edit for the overall layout. I would like to use dreamweaver to edit the files as well insted of via the admin cp.. any ideas?
Regards
Stephen Grindall
for minor changes (background, text color, logo etc), these can be altered using the themes edit option in Admin CP, and by changing the images in the images folder on the server.
For medium changes, like putting a site menu to the left of every page or whatever, you have to go through each template in the admin CP, and see if it has this code:
<html>
<head>
near the top of the template. If so, edit what you want under this code:
<body>
If it doesn't have
<html>
<head>
dont touch it.
For major changes (you will need to be very skilled), edit every template to completly change the look of your forum.
For all the above options, make sure you create a new set of template first, dont work on one you already have. Incase you stuff up, you can delete, create and start over.
What does that have to do with editing in dreamweaver?
You can use dreamweaver to edit a theme by editing a theme.mybb file and then importing it to mybb. If you're starting from the initial light theme then the file is located in install/resources/ - if you've already made modifications, then you can export it to a theme.mybb file using the Admin CP > Themes > Download tool.
The themes.mybb file follows a complex syntax which as far as I know is undocumented, but it's easy enough to figure out so long as you don't touch the funny symbols
If you were hoping to use the dreamweaver wysiwyg editor then prepare to be disappointed. Because of the system of compacting the theme down to one file, it's no surprise that dreamweaver doesn't understand it... if you need to preview or manually edit bits, then you can paste the source of that section into a blank file, and so long as it doesn't have any theme.mybb nitty-gritty you can edit it and then paste back.
When you're done, use the Admin CP > Themes > Import tool to upload and establish the theme on your forums
