Easy Way to enhance aesthetics of your Phorums

This is just a quick post to those of you who may not be very familiar with the whole PHP business and have been intimidated at trying to edit any of these files into your site template. Though I've just learned PHP a few weeks ago, I think this is simple enough that just about anyone can do. An introduction like this will probably be useful in future documentation.

All you need to know is one line of PHP and how to find your way through html. Simply rename the necessary files (i.e. index.php, list.php, etc.) to something similar file_phorum.php, or something like that. So what you will end up with, for example, would be files named index_phorum.php, list_phorum.php, etc. Next, you'll want to open the HTML file that you want to insert the phorum functionality into. Find your place in the HTML and insert the following code:
<? include("file_phorum.php"); ?>
This really works well if you have some sort of table set up so that the code can fit in one of the large cells and page formatting will be less likely to go down the tubes, so to speak.
finally rename the HTML file to file.php, corresponding to the name of the phorum file (file_phorum.php) that you included. Basically your HTML file becomes the name of the original phorum file before it got renamed. Make sure this goes in the root folder of your phorum.
Here's an example from start to finish:
1) rename index.php to "index_phorum.php"
2) Open your HTML file (say index.html) and insert the following code:
<? include ("index_phorum.php"); ?>
3) Save the HTML file and rename it to index.php
4) Repeat 1-3 for the rest of the files and you're done! Your phorum will now be in your custom pages. You'll probably want to change all the phorum text and table color settings through the admin control panel to better fit your site.

Hope this helps!
Cameron Perry

Sorry that's wrong and will lead to a lot of problems.
phorum3 is not made to be included directly into pages.

put all your design (i.e. tables and other html) into include/header.php and include/footer.php. These are put before and after the forum itself.

Too bad that there is no uploading function here.

the header and footer thing was quite clear to me, but i'm looking for a possibility to integrate phorum into phpwcms... that seems do be quite a hard part. there is one way to go, but i dislike that. its possible to include the phorum in an iframe.. not the smart way to go.

I have tried that header & footer thing. After so many hours on this thing I managed to get the table in the header only. This way nothing interferes.

When I try to put table with one column on the left and the phorum on the right column, I have to close the table in the footer. If you then try "search" or a few other functions, another table shows and messes up everything. If I could somehow disable the header and footer calls from all functions except index.php. Any ideas? Or maybe I don't know what I'm talking about... still a beginner here; I have to go trial and error way.

--tim