New template rundown

[diablopath]

I just installed VB last night, so I'm still working with the default template.

Is there a version of this I can download and then edit file by file?
I'm not really so sure what needs to be made, but if the code is in infront of me, I can work with that and get what I want.

Same goes for all images and things involved.

[Lynne]

You may create as many default vbulletin styles to play around with as you want. Just go to Style Manager > Add New Style > and put No Parent Style in the Parent Style drop-down. That will give you a brand new style that is completely unmodded. Then play around with it all you want.

If you want to modify images, create a new folder in images with the style name (or whatever you want) and then copy all the image folders into there (icons, misc, etc). Then go to your new style in the Style Manger list and select StyleVars and make sure the correct path to the folders is listed in the Image Paths (instead of "/images/statusicon" you would put "/images/yournewfolder/statusicon").

[diablopath]

Instead of having a huge list of stuff that I have to individually click, is there a way I can make one CSS Stylesheet (or similar) apply to *everything* ?

[Lynne]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. If you want one CSS Stylesheet to apply to multiple styles, then create this sort of situation in your Style Manger

- Style 1 - make all changes to the Main CSS in this style
- - Style 2 - Select Style 1 as the parent when creating it
- - Style 3 - Select Style 1 as the parent when creating it
- - Style 4 - Select Style 1 as the parent when creating it

Now you can go and edit the Templates in Style 2, 3, and 4 and make the forums look different structurally but they will still all have the same colors that you selected in Style 1 (as long as you don't touch the Main CSS in Style 2, 3, or 4).

Does that answer your question?

[diablopath]

I'm sorry, it's like you're talking to a rock.
I'm really new to vBulletin >.>
I'm not really trying to edit it *from* vBulletin itself.

I'm trying to basically copy a template (say, one you'd upload and install).
Look at that seems much easier. I downloaded one to investigate, and it looks like all the coloring information and stuff is in that one file.

That's kind of what I'm aiming at doing.
Seems a lot easier to me.

Now what I'm wanting is just a very basic one (perhaps like, an actual default template download) that I can edit myself to get my desired results.

Looking in the styles manager options and whatnot, there's just a lot of stuff there that I wouldn't even know where to start with. I found this color map reference and was going to use that to go down through a default sheet, fill in the colors and whatnot that I wanted, and take it from there.

[Lynne]

First you need to learn to differential between styles and templates. They are two different thing. A style includes all the coloring, css, and templates. A template is a little tiny part of a style that determines what a small part of a single page on your forum looks like. For instance, the postbit template is what determines what my post looks like. So, there are several postbit templates on this page (it gets used once for each post). They are all contained within the SHOWTHREAD template. And then there is the navbar template that determines what the top navigation bar looks like. And so on and so on. So, a single style is made up of many, many individual templates.

If you just want to start out with a default style, then you do what I said in post 2: go to Style Manager > Add New Style > and put No Parent Style in the Parent Style drop-down. That will give you a style with the default colors and all the default templates.