Forum Style - Lightweight Style for Small Screen Devices (cell phone, iphone, mobile, android)

A lightweight *forum only style aimed at small screen devices such as Windows Smartphones, Nokias and even iPhones. It has VERY low bandwidth requirements - 15 times less on my site - 20K as opposed to 300K for forumhome.

*forum only - I have done a very small amount of rough work on CMS templates, a simple single column CMS *could* be created to work with this style without too much effort. However I am not sure if you can have a different CMS layout dependent on which style you are using?

This is an update to the mobile style I have previously released.

The changes are predominantly aesthetic to take advantage of larger screens.

It is also much easier to change colour schemes by editing the commented CSS file.

Demo: http://vbdev.org/forum.php?styleid=7

This is a a lightweight style and as such has much reduced functionality/information over the default vBulletin style.

Install instructions:

• Firstly, if upgrading, I recommend installing this as a new style rather than overwriting your previous install. This way you get to test it first without trashing your existing style.
• BACKUP YOUR EXISTING lightweight.css.php FILE IF YOU HAVE CSS CUSTOMISATIONS
• Download ZIP file
• Unzip to a local/temp directory
• Edit lightweight.css.php file to customise colours if required
• Upload contents of the upload directory in the zip file folder to your forum root.
• Install style XML via Style Manager in your ADMINCP
• **Install and configure "LightWeight Style Options"
• See post 2 for a FAQ
• Click "Mark as Installed"
• Test it out
• Leave a rating
• Leave feedback
• Enjoy checking your site from your mobile phone without the need to pinch/zoom/wait etc...

Version Control:

1.0.0 - 25 AUG 2010 - Initial Release on vBulletin.org
1.0.1 - 26 AUG 2010 - Fixed "Mark All Forums Read" link in Search results. Released Lightweight Style Options to customise this
1.0.2 - 21 MAR 2011 - Updated to 4.1.2, removed short tags from CSS, fixed some issues discovered since last release, added some stuff.
1.0.3 - 16 DEC 2011 - Updated to 1.0.3, tried to fix all known issues. Nothing new. If you have updated your site as bugs have been found, probably no need to upgrade. But if you're upgrading your site from to 4.1.9, might be worthwhile.
1.0.3a - 16 DEC 2011 - remove test ad hook code accidently left in postbit_legacy template

Branding Free:

The style is free to use. However I ask that you keep links in the footer. If you want to remove them - send me a donation of an amount you can afford, or that you think is fair/reasonable, it's up to you how much.

[thenamesgould]

Originally Posted by dartho

Is that to say you did this, and then all was cool?

Sorry for the slow reply. Yep, that's right.

[Mr_Running]

Thank you Dartho for the Lightweight Mobile Style.
Installed and currently checking it out.

I have the default vB google ads and I would like to remove the header and footer ads and keep the post ad.

How do I remove the header and footer Ads from the Lightweight Mobile Style?

[dartho]

Originally Posted by Mr_Running

Thank you Dartho for the Lightweight Mobile Style.
Installed and currently checking it out.

I have the default vB google ads and I would like to remove the header and footer ads and keep the post ad.

How do I remove the header and footer Ads from the Lightweight Mobile Style?

edit thoise templates and search for and remove the ad hooks. They start have ad_location in the line, so you can search on this text

[The Rocketeer]

Dartho, you didn't answer my question
Also I was trying to improve the cms's look by removing the sidebars and any widget boxes, Can you tell me how? and after logging in the Copyright appears on top of the CMS..


also, i noticed, for some reason the vbulletin mobile detection script doesn't work properly for opera mini and a few other smart phone / iphone like devices? I set this skin as the mobile ski but its not changing. visiting my site using opera mini I get the default style, instead of the mobile style.

heres the opera mini simulator: http://www.opera.com/developer/tools/mini/


thanks

[dartho]

Sorry - didn;t see this post:

Originally Posted by The Rocketeer

i see. which css file is that? having a hard time finding it in the header and navbar templates.

Also how do you disable the cms sidebar for the mobile style?
I tried adding the below code to the Lightweight Style Options but didn't work

$vbulletin->options['enablesidebar'] = 0;

the lightweight.css.php file which you would have uploaded to your forum root. Does the following path resolve on your site? /images/misc/mobilelogo.png - that's where the logo lives

As for the sidebar - I can't get a sidebar to show? However, gice the following code a try: $show['sidebar']=0; - might work, might not ...

The CMS isn't that straight forward to work out, otherwise it would be in this style. It really depends on your layouts I think. I have a very basic CMS setup working on my test site. I'll attach the style here and you can test and get back to me. Same rules apply - backup/test etc. before going live or overwriting you existing lightweight style. Best bet is to add it as a child style of light weight for testing, then if you're happy you can re-import it and merge into existing.

Let me know how it goes

[dartho]

@Rocketeer - As for the mobile device detection - dunno. You could edit the init.php file and manually modify the detection code to pickup those devices, but I think you probably need to lodge a support ticket with vBulletin.com

[The Rocketeer]

Thank you Dartho, Yes that solves the logo problem. I also figured out that having the Text Option enabled in the Liteweight styles options causes the image to be replaced by text. (missed that setting before haha)

Now about the sidebar, I am actually referring to the CMS Sidebar, Grids or Widgets as you call it, you know the ones that appear in your CMS such as Menu, Polls, recent Forum posts etc?? I am trying to disable that or any widgets to appear in the CMS home page. That would make it look clean and pretty much complete.

I tried the CMSONLY style you gave me. Installed it as a Child Style of light weight, didn't notice any difference until when I went to my CMS / Homepage, I noticed that it doesn't show any articles. The header, nav and footer is there but the content is not present, and only shows this $column[1] .. I went inside the vbcms_grid_1 and vbcms_grid_2 and noticed it had a lot less code, only this actually..

<vb:comment></vb:comment>
$column[1]

so maybe you have a few lines of code gone missing there ?

And thanks I will probably open up a support ticket with vBulletin about their Mobile Detection Script not working with Opera Mini and this or any other style.

Happy Holidays

[dartho]

Can't really offer much more - I don't know much about CMS or sidebars at all - I don't actually use it (CMS), or vBuylletin 4 for that matter. That CMS Style works on the simple CMS setup I have on my test site (http://vbdev.org)

[The Rocketeer]

Thanks Dartho. I am working on the CMS part, trying to see if it can be improved.
But I think you might have given me the wrong vbulletin-style-lightweight-1.0.3a-CMSONLY.xml version. lol. I fixed it a bit but I think its missing some codes on the vbcms_grid templates.

Mine Looks like this style on your test site: http://vbdev.org/?styleid=16

I think it should look like this one instead? - http://vbdev.org/?styleid=7

- notice on your test site how on styleid=16 there's no articles showing and it just shows $column[1], but on styleid=7 it shows the articles properly? Thats what I am talking about, styleid=16 must be the one you gave me, thats missing some edits.

[dartho]

Actually - I think it is something to do with vBulletin's template system as opposed me exporting incorrectly.

If I export styleid 7 on my test site, i do not get CMS customisations to that style (although viewing it, you can see they are there). If during the export process I select CMS as the product, we end up with that blank page with column[1] on it...

Here's what I had to do to make it work.
Import the Lightweight Style to a new style
Import the CMSONLY style and merge with lightweight style imported above
Import lightweight style again and merge with lightweight style above

See how that goes ...