When it comes to open source forum packages, there are quite a few to choose from because message boards are one of the most used and loved parts of any website. Since SMF (Simple Machines Forum) is so versatile, it easily fits into a wide range of CMS’s (Content Management Systems). That means you are just as likely to see a Joomla SMF combination site as you are to see a well designed Mambo SMF site. This level of flexibility has lent SMF a major upper hand in the ongoing, but friendly, battle for supremacy between the various forum packages.
There are folks out there who swear by the SMF record for producing stable versions with a highly intuitive interface. The fact is, you won’t find an easier to use forum package and this alone makes SMF a good choice for those who are just starting out. On the other hand, some complain that the SMF services in the area of customization are not quite as indepth as they would like. Other forum packages tend to have broader communities with a greater range of mods. This may be due simply to the fact that since SMF is so easy to set up, there are a whole lot of forums out there running this script that simply never bothered to change their look from the default settings. Truth be told, there are plenty of SMF templates if you are willing to do even the bare minimal of search work.
It’s worth it to find a good theme or template because you are going to be able to create a much more customized experience for your users if you take the time to take care of how your board looks. Even in niche interest communities, branding is a big part of building a website to be a success in its chosen field. Since SMF makes the work pretty simple, you can expect to have your board fully customized in a much shorter amount of time than you might think right now. Let’s take a look at what all you can do and how to do it the ‘simple’ way.
First off, you need to know that when you customize SMF, you are looking for the following things: themes, button sets and other graphics like topic icons or smiley sets. Each of these is installed in a slightly different way.
For a theme, all you need to do is first download it to your computer and uncompress it. Then, go to your server and within the themes directory of your SMF installation, create a folder named after your theme so that you know what is within the folder later. Upload all of the files from your uncompressed download into this directory. After this, head to the Admin Center of your SMF forum and navigate to ‘Theme and Layout Settings’. Where you see ‘Install a new theme’ you will need to enter the the directory of your theme such as ‘/SMF/themes/graytheme/’. Next, click install and after you alter the configurations of the theme to suit your personal preferences, you’re done!
To replace your button images, the process is even easier. Simply download the button package you want, uncompress the file and see all those graphical button files? Go onto your server and find the themes folder that you want to install the buttons onto. Then find the /images/ folder and then then /english/ folder within it. Upload all of your new buttons and overwrite the old buttons. That’s it!
To change your forum banner, simply go to your server, navigate to the /themes/ directory, choose the sub directory of the theme you want and open index.template.php so you can locate this line of code:
smflogo.gif
This file name is what you need to replace with your own logo in the .gif format. Simply upload your custom logo, of any file name, to the /images subfolder of your theme directory within your SMF installation. Make sure the name of your logo is the same as the name of the .gif in the index.template.php file.
That’s all you need to know to get your SMF message boards to look truly customized!
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