[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]

[Xbox]

Yeah, I can't agree more. Very good work. I have just installed the category space mod and that looks great. Also am about to install the cat. background image mod, but just like Wij said, what size do the images need ?

yeah very thX

Hey.

We installed this modicfication a while back and love it. Now I'd like to add to it.

I was wondering if we can add an extra block in between 2 forums? In one of the white spaces.

In other words:

http://www.thrillnetwork.com/boards

Like the large sponsorship block at the top the one that has our SpeedZone ad in it I'd like to add another block like that in between "Trip Reports and Travel Tips" and "games"

Here is our current layout:

Here is what we want to create.

[Burning_Ice]

Try the BR tages? That probly would do the trick.

That didn't work. Thanks for the suggestion

[SaintDog]

Ask at vBulletin.org, that would require hacking to a certain extent

I did. There and also at VB.com No help

[imported_simplythi]

I tried to apply this mod and a few other mods found on this board. I dont understand why but my VB CP is some how different from everyone elses. I dont get the same options when i expand the list when i go to modify templates. It doesn't load all the templates that VB uses, but instead all i see is a huge list of that says Change original from top to bottom. I provided a screen shot to back up my problem and let you guys see what i see. Maybe someone can help and explain to me how i can work with this. Thanks in advance.

[snout]

thanks bro, needed the forum home spacing mod , nice one