Assistance in making a forum theme

[Schala Zeal]

I recently opened up my own forum ( http://schala.kicks-ass.net/forum/index.php ) and I'd like to seek help in putting together an SMF-compatible board theme and smiley set for my board, which I intend on making a Zeal Kingdom theme for.

I don't have a means to advertise or steal members from the Compendium. Believe me, I love this site. I just seek assistance in making a Zeal Kingdom forum theme for my own forum.

Thanks guys!

EDIT: Link fixed

[Belaith]

Are you completely sure you can handle running a forum? Yeah, it's easy, but can you do it alone? I've run a few forums in my day, but it was always wise to have back-up.

Once ZeaLitY or Ramsus (preferably Ramsus) gets to this thread, they'll tell you how to get things going. I've only ran invisionfree boards.

I joined, by the way.

[Schala Zeal]

Okay! I'll approve you once I get them back up. I run them from my Vista partition but switched to OSX to watch a DVD. Just try periodically during the day ^_^

[Belaith]

What exactly is the board for? Is it an RP board? Why am I asking so many questions?

edit:  I saw the site was down.... You wanted me to check when the site's up periodically.

[Schala Zeal]

Yes, I run the site from my own computer, but it's on my hard drive. I had to switch startup drives, sorry. Don't worry though. If you were able to get your registration in, I'll approve it once I'm done with my errands.

[Belaith]

I registered before it went down.

[Ramsus]

SMF themes are pretty straightforward. Just make a new folder in the Themes folder, and copy the index.php and index.template.php files from the "default" theme into it. You should also copy over the images folder.

Then it's just editing the template to add in your HTML and CSS. If you need control over how posts are displayed, just copy over Display.template.php from the default theme and customize it. The copy in your Theme's folder will override the default template. You can do the same thing for other parts of the layout, but for the overall layout/theme just editing index.template.php and customizing the CSS should work.

The templates themselves are just raw PHP. It's kind of messy how they did it, too.

[Schala Zeal]

*chuckles* I hate to admit this, but though I am fluent in C, C++, Pascal, Java, etc... I'm.... rusty on my HTML and CSS, not to mention I know very little PHP.

[Mauron]

I can probably help some. I haven't worked with SMF before, but I am a web developer, specifically working with PHP/HTML/CSS.

Feel free to contact me with whatever problems you have.

[Schala Zeal]

Alright then, I'll try and get to looking that up. *smile*