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%

[MoJo Smirnoff]

this is awesome! Thanks so much for sharing!! Using this now and love it!

[UKBusinessLive]

Originally Posted by MoJo Smirnoff

this is awesome! Thanks so much for sharing!! Using this now and love it!

Glad you enjoy it

[TimzZ]

So If I download this color.zip file, what's in it? Do I still have to do this tutorial?

[UKBusinessLive]

Originally Posted by TimzZ

So If I download this color.zip file, what's in it? Do I still have to do this tutorial?

Well lets see the file contains the color squares, you can of course make your own, and it has the code for you to edit with your own info.

Generally you just need to read the instructions at the top once if your happen doing minor template edits then this should be a doddle for you

let me know if you want any help :up:

[TimzZ]

Well, it sounds pretty difficult for me when I was reading.. Sounds like a lot of work, or am I wrong?

[UKBusinessLive]

Originally Posted by TimzZ

Well, it sounds pretty difficult for me when I was reading.. Sounds like a lot of work, or am I wrong?

Well if you wanted it done in 5 minutes then this is not for you, It will take time for you to create the new color schemes, to how you want it, then you need to edit the code and add the url to your new colored skins, then save them to your footer, the code edits and saving to the footer can be done in less than 15 minutes i guess, but the different colored skins, that what will take the time.

Its not that hard to do but a little time consuming, don't expect to do it in half an hour, take your time and have fun, I'll help if you get stuck

[Sofia]

Thank you for this mod, UKBusinessLive Very useful.

[UKBusinessLive]

Originally Posted by Sofia

Thank you for this mod, UKBusinessLive Very useful.

Thanks Sofia

[nnStaff]

If anybody's looking for the new hot color palettes, check here.. I use them for things like this

http://www.colourlovers.com/

[UKBusinessLive]

Originally Posted by nnStaff

If anybody's looking for the new hot color palettes, check here.. I use them for things like this

http://www.colourlovers.com/

Thanks nnstaff

Just bookedmarked it myself