HOME > CHAPTER 6

Chapter 6: Creating Your Own Template
Making your own template can be not just very interesting, but also time consuming. There are many small details just waiting to be overlooked, and that is why I advise you not to rush through it too fast. Take your time, and the reward will come at the end.

As with many other design-related projects, one of the most challenging things about creating an appealing phpBB template is to get the idea for the layout. You might already have a homepage and would like to apply that layout, but many times I have seen people building the rest of their site around the layout of their phpBB template.

That is why, in this chapter, we will start from scratch by telling you how to go about getting the basic layout idea into building the entire template.

Let me start by saying that inspiration, and the whole creative process itself, is not some precious gift that very few people are endowed with. It is something everybody can learn in time, with practice and some patience. Find some layout ideas and tweak them until you are satisfied with the result; the more time you spend doing this, the more you will learn about yourself: what you like and what you don't. Soon you will have developed your own style that you can turn almost anything into.

There is a limitless amount of places to begin looking for your future phpBB template layouts; magazines, newspapers, advertisings, homepages, constructions, art, or even basic wallpapers are just some of the inspiration sources I have found useful. Spending half an hour in a coffee shop with a pen drawing lines on a napkin can reveal the most appealing layout of all. It all depends on how "far" you're willing to go with this, even though I doubt anyone can build a good template layout based on things like… a teapot!

For the kind of layout needed in a phpBB template, you should try to look for patterns you can use. For example, we need something that can show topics and posts, maybe with room for an image and a menu.

The template I'm going to build in this chapter is based on an idea I got from a newspaper. It wasn't that complicated really: just a photo, a headline, and some text, which I drew a sketch of on a piece of paper so I wouldn't forget. I liked the simplicity, the lines, and the rather big image. And even though it might not look like a phpBB template at first glance, I will try anyway, while showing you how to work around any obstacles that are bound to bump up on the way:

BOOK DETAILS   Paperback, 360 pages Released: May 2005 ISBN: 1904811132 Authors: Stoyan Stefanov, Jeremy Rogers, Mike Lothar

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction
1: Introduction to phpBB
2: Installing and Configuring phpBB
3: A Quick Tour of phpBB
4: Customizing Your Forum Free Chapter
5: Forum Administration
6: Creating Your Own Template
7: Creating a New MOD
8: Programming phpBB
Appendix A: Directory Structure
Appendix B: phpBB Resources
Appendix C: phpBB Code and Permission Cheatsheets
Appendix D: phpBB Database Structure
Index
 

View the book details on PacktPub.com