End-User Options - UKBL ~ Choose Multiple Forum Colors - like VB.Org

UKBL ~ Choose Multiple Forum Colors - like VB.Org

With recent requests to do something similar to VB.org without all the complications of seperate CCS scripts and pages, Now you'll be able to change your forums color, Just like VB.org This hack will show you how to make and customise your own forum styles - Great Fun

PLEASE NOTE, The demo Screenshots are not the Colors you will be getting They are just quick examples i made to show different colors. The Colours are custom made by you when you Edit the CSS in your Styles template folder

Lets get Started

First you will need to decide how many colors you want, For example we'll chose just 4, but you can have as many or as little as you want.

Then decide which forum style you want to use to offer your color changes, I've used just the VB default style for this example.

So here we go..........

1. Go to your Admin CP and select Style Manager

2. Click the Link at the bottom - Add New Style

3. Parent Style - Select the Style that you want to offer Color Changes on, Normally this would be your chosen default style, and name it Default - Green Allow User selection - Yes Display order - 20 Then Save

4. You will see that you've created a copy of your default style called default green. Now we'll need to play with our Colors

5. On your defalt Green style click on All Style Options and GO, scroll down untill you come to the Body CSS

Then basically you need to work your way down this changing Background Colors, font colors etc,, If you click on one of the colored squares you will bring up a selector of colors which can let you chose the color you want without having to know Hex color numbers.

Trust me, I've not done this before and already within minutes i was making different forum styles, It really is that simple, The key word here is experiment You'll love it

To see your changes save and then click on the Forum Home Page link at the top right of your screen.

So basically thats what we need to do to make our different color Styles, Do a new Default Style for each color you want.

Color Squares

Next we'll need our color Squares









Just make your own in the color which best represents your Style and save to your forums /images/misc folder To fit nicely in the bottom navbar, I made mine 13 x 13 pixels and made them in paint.net, You can use photoshop or even windows paint

Half way there

Now comes the Fun Part

We need to Make our Color Squares Clickable so for that we'll have to edit a bit of code.

Open Notepad or a similar Text editor and add the following Code

<a href="link.com"><img src="picture.jpg"></a>

Now we will need to add our url of our style to the Front of that code like this

<a href="http://www.ukbusinesslive.co.uk/forum/index.php?styleid=5"><img src="picture.jpg"></a>

You can find out which Style id you need in the Style Manager in your AdminCP, Next we add the url of our color square.

If you already havn't done so, Upload your Color squares to your forums image/misc folder and use the full url to link to that in the code, so now our code will be like this

<a href="http://www.ukbusinesslive.co.uk/forum/index.php?styleid=5"><img src="http://www.ukbusinesslive.co.uk/forum/images/misc/green.png"></a>

Then we add a spacer Code to the end of our coded like this  

<a href="http://www.ukbusinesslive.co.uk/forum/index.php?styleid=5"><img src="http://www.ukbusinesslive.co.uk/forum/images/misc/green.png"></a> &nbsp;

Thats it, Then you do that with all the colors and save them one after the other, so you end up with one long line of code

   <a href="http://www.ukbusinesslive.co.uk/forum/index.php?styleid=5"><img src="http://www.ukbusinesslive.co.uk/forum/images/misc/green.png"></a>&nbsp; <a href="http://www.ukbusinesslive.co.uk/forum/index.php?styleid=6"><img src="http://www.ukbusinesslive.co.uk/forum/images/misc/red.png"></a>&nbsp;  <a href="http://www.ukbusinesslive.co.uk/forum/index.php?styleid=7"><img src="http://www.ukbusinesslive.co.uk/forum/images/misc/blue.png"></a>&nbsp;

Thats the code done, Now to add a few words to the Front of it

 Choose Your Color &nbsp;  <a href="http://www.ukbusinesslive.co.uk/forum/index.php?styleid=5"><img src="http://www.ukbusinesslive.co.uk/forum/images/misc/green.png"></a> &nbsp; <a href="http://www.ukbusinesslive.co.uk/forum/index.php?styleid=6"><img src="http://www.ukbusinesslive.co.uk/forum/images/misc/red.png"></a>&nbsp;  <a href="http://www.ukbusinesslive.co.uk/forum/index.php?styleid=7"><img src="http://www.ukbusinesslive.co.uk/forum/images/misc/blue.png"></a>&nbsp;

Remember to add a unedited Link back to your normal Style so members can keep using the original, You can use a white color square for this.

and thats it :up: save your work

Next we'll need to upload the code to our footer template of our Parent Style

Go to Default (Parent) style in the Admin CP and select All style Options > Edit Templates > Footer
and then find

<strong>

and below it add your code, Then save.

You'll see that it will copy to all the child styles automatically

You should get something along the lines of this









Thats all folks

Please Click Install and i'll support 100%

[UKBusinessLive]

Reserved

[GSeybold]

OMG Gerry I was just looking for this, this morning. How ironic. We'll create some colors this week and install this. Creating new colors is kind of fun for me and it's something I can actually do. LOL

Makes it much easier to keep everyone happy by using this without having the hassles of fixing new designs to meet your forum needs . Much easier to go with a default style and just change coloring.

Thanks so much. I really appreciate this more than you know!

Gabby

[UKBusinessLive]

Originally Posted by GSeybold

OMG Gerry I was just looking for this, this morning. How ironic. We'll create some colors this week and install this. Creating new colors is kind of fun for me and it's something I can actually do. LOL

Makes it much easier to keep everyone happy by using this without having the hassles of fixing new designs to meet your forum needs . Much easier to go with a default style and just change coloring.

Thanks so much. I really appreciate this more than you know!

Gabby

Hey Gabby,

Glad you like it, A few people had it on their sites and kept quite about it, why?? So this i did last night when i was asked to make something like this for another admin.

Now its on here, We'll share it all round

The great thing about it, is how easily you can change the styles, Its so much fun to change the colors and then viewing it to see what it turns out like, thats the fun part, Plus everyones different, so we'll be seening some great style edits comin up, and perhaps some new skin designers of the future

Give me a shout if you need help

Take Care

[GSeybold]

I'm working on a pretty in pink one now

[UKBusinessLive]

Originally Posted by GSeybold

I'm working on a pretty in pink one now

Nice, I bet you'll make some great skin designs Gabby

Don't forget to down load the example code, and click install

[GSeybold]

Worked like a charm. My members now have 11 colors to choose from. Thanks for your help Uk and thanks for your patience as well.

I used 26 X 26 squares because it's easier for my members to see.

Great mod. Nominated for MOTM as far as I'm concerned.

Gabby

[UKBusinessLive]

Originally Posted by GSeybold

Worked like a charm. My members now have 11 colors to choose from. Thanks for your help Uk and thanks for your patience as well.

I used 26 X 26 squares because it's easier for my members to see.

Great mod. Nominated for MOTM as far as I'm concerned.

Gabby

Thanks Gabby, Always a Pleasure to help

[yeku]

Installed

thank

[UKBusinessLive]

Originally Posted by yeku

Installed

thank

Thanks Hope your colors end up better than my examples