[HowTo] Design and Tweak your Frontpage

[HowTo] Design and Tweak your Frontpage

v1.0.0 [build for vBulletin 2.2.6 Final] last update:12/06/02

_____ Introduction:

• Each vBulletin forum installed on a web server is either a part of a web site or maybe the web site itself. Either way, the section that is probably the most requested by the end-user is the frontpage which holds the introduction to the forum, the categories with its boards and maybe some other boxes like the private messages, who is currently online and the birthdays. It speaks for itself, that at least this page should give a good impression to the end-user who is browsing your web site. And might consider to continue to browse it and maybe even register.
  
  It has been six months now since I have purchased a license for vBulletin. And since my forum has been online I had a lot of questions and awnsers to them on how to improve my site. Some that did not had a direct awnser and were sometimes somewhat hard to figure out, got sorted out and put together as a little how to so I could share the knowledge with other members who had the same questions and were looking for the same awnsers. Several of those threads turned out pretty nice and with some we found some issues and even though we were able to 'fix' them, the threads did look a bit messy. It was hard to figure out sometimes what to do where, etc. So that is why I have put together this thread, with some design tips and some tweaks in an easy (and better ordered) overview.
  
  Please understand that I am not a guru in anything, and that I am trying my best to get things to work for everybody. However, I will not and can not support older versions of these hacks, older versions of vBulletin, and/or integration with other code-hacks / template modifications. All template modifications in this thread are based on a clean installation of vBulletin 2.2.6 final. Some of the provided code are also very good examples on how you could continue to apply them to other pages of your board; so read and learn > 'How can I do this on that other page?'-questions means that you didn't read and learned.
  
  Said that, let's explain what you can expect.

_____ Index:[list=1][*] Breaking up the categories from eachother[*] Adding background images to the categories[*] Adding onMouseOver-highlighting effect to the boards[*] Adding your own (blinking and clickable) private messages images[/list=1]

[Floris]

I am not going to awnser those kind of questions. Put them in the Site Feedback forum.

Excellent job as always

nice

[WildCrow]

Excellent tutorial

Very well explained, thanks guys.

[chiel]

I got a question about the "Adding background images to the categories" is it not simpler to edit the "Category Strip Background Color" and change it to something like this: "#606096" background="http://www.site.com/images/frontpage/cat_bg_01.gif"

??
can you please say why you did it your way? is it better??

[mashby]

Wow! The girth of this post is impressive.

I've installed many of the mods that xiphoid has posted here. In fact, I've done searches on his name to try and find more tweaks that he's done.

Nice suite of template modifications xiphoid.

[Floris]

chiel, because it uses {imagesfolder} and that means, if you move your site to another server, you dont have to think about changing all the paths, etc. this is more integrated into the system. But . use whatever you like. i believe this is simplere.

[SaintDog]

Originally posted by xiphoid
.....use whatever you like. i believe this is simplere.

I agree, using variable replacements make things so much easier than having to edit things over and over

[Floris]

By the way, I remember me posting something my site was down for a little while, its up again.

[sphinx]

nice guides etc,I tried to download the images but kept getting a 404 error