[Michael]

Hi all

I’m embarking on a little change in appearance on my forum. I have got most of it sorted, though there is a little something I’d like to add.

In my forum, a member pointed out that a new forum should not have too much on it – well at least too much with lots of zero’s at the end. I have a lot of sub-forums, and half of them have not been utilized yet.

So I changed the front page code to only display categories, instead of a huge list. I also had hidden some irrelevant forums, for the time being.

What I need to do now is add columns that will list the total posts and topics for all the forums in that category and the last person who posted in that forum, in the same format as I have for my ‘Recent Converstations’, and an extra line in the row that would display the sub-forums that have posts in them.

For example, this is what a row’s format would look like (Category | Posts | Topics | Last Post):

Category Name – Category Description | 92 | 24 | 3 minutes ago by Michael

Sub Forum 1, Sub Forum 2, Sub Forum 3

Can anyone point me in the right direction? Even a little bit of help here would be great.

Michael

[Michael]

I take it no-one has a clue about this one ‘ey?

Not to worry though – I might find out how to do it next year.

[Gautam]

I really like the way you columnize the topic table. Thinking to follow the same layout in my future designs, if any

[grassrootspa]

@ Michael:

Your forum is incredible. One of the best bbPress designs I have ever seen. Did you do it all yourself?

[Michael]

Gautam: Thanks. I thought that because I made the forum only show categories, the recent conversations should have more information. Otherwise there would be too much whitespace.

If you do, let me know so I can comment.

grassrootspa: Thanks very much. You think so? I still would like to make changes to it. Would you do that if it was your forum?

I downloaded a template called BusinessLike from AwesomStyles.com and modified most of it.

Thanks for your kind comments guys.

[grassrootspa]

Michael:

Everyone’s different, but I do like your forum’s current look. Looks very sophisticated and more like a vBulletin theme than a bbPress theme. Maybe your new one will be even better though.

Haha, I liked BusinessLike too and was actually going to build a new theme around it as well (I prefer the fluid look, the fixed width feels limiting as to what you can do). After a bit of playing just decided to make my current theme fluid.

(This was my old layout structure: http://SportsTalkPA.com/

Here is the new fluid one: http://NewsTalkPA.com/

Obviously the colors are different, but you get the general idea.

I’m running into problems with the forum.php and frontpage.php coding for some reason (see the bottom: last poster, last poster gravatar, link to last post in forum are not generating properly) The last poster/gravatar stuff is appearing on the wrong line for some reason and the link to the last forum post doesn’t work.

[Michael]

There’s still plenty I want to do with it – most of that will happen when I purchase a new domain for it. I’m glad you like it. I must say, however, that I’m not too happy with it.

I also preferred the fluid look for a while, but I found that more and more people are using wide-screens – some even HD, so there’s a lot of white-space, even on 1280×800 (my current resolution).

I quite like those designs. If you didn’t have the ‘Powered by bbPress’, I wouldn’t even know which forum software you were using (only at a glance, though). I like what you have going there. I’ve been trying to incorporate avatars in the forum list, but with no luck.

I’m not too sure what you mean. I think you should open up a new topic for this – I have a funny feeling this one might be closed because we’re going off topic.

[Gautam]

Agree with grassrootspa.

By the way, mimicked your forum’s looks (only the table part ) – http://forum.gaut.am/ (This is the Mystique theme which I have ported today to bbPress, still under development)

[Gautam]

I think I’m now an expert at porting themes

1 day for a theme (without a large settings page)

[Michael]

Looks nice – you’ve got a nice blog there Gautam.

[Gautam]

Thanks

[Adam Harley (Kawauso)]

@Michael888: In response to your question in the other topic, I can almost certainly show you how to do that, but it’s a bit hard to explain without having the code for your bb_forums() list loop

[Michael]

Kawasuo: Thanks – I’m glad you can help. The link below is the code I have for the forum list on the front page. I simply commented out anything that is not a category.

http://pastie.org/765956 (page) or http://pastie.org/765956.txt (Raw Text)

Thanks again

Peace, Michael

[Adam Harley (Kawauso)]

<?php if ( bb_forums() ) : ?>

<h2><?php _e('Categories'); ?></h2>

<table id="forumlist" cellspacing="0">

<tr>

<th><?php _e('Title'); ?></th>

<!--<th><?php _e('Topics'); ?></th>

<th><?php _e('Posts'); ?></th>-->

</tr>

<?php

while ( $depth = bb_forum() ) :

if ($depth === 1 ) :

if ($depth < $prev_depth) :

?>



</td>

</tr>

<?php			endif; ?>

<tr<?php ( bb_get_forum_is_category() ? bb_forum_class('bb-category') : bb_forum_class() ) ?>>

<td colspan="3">

<big><a href="<?php forum_link(); ?>"><b><?php forum_name(); ?></b></a></big><?php forum_description( array( 'before' => '<br/><small>', 'after' => '</small>' ) ); ?>



<?php		else :

if ( $prev_depth == 1 ) : ?>

<br />

<?php

else :

?>, <?php

endif;

?><a href="<?php forum_link(); ?>" title="<?php forum_description( array( 'before' => '', 'after' => '' ) ); ?>"><?php forum_name(); ?></a><?php

endif;

$prev_depth = $depth;

endwhile; ?>



</td>

</tr>

</table>

<?php endif; // bb_forums() ?>

[Michael]

Okey dokey – we have something going here. Thanks very much – wouldn’t have been able to do it without you.

Now, there’s one last thing that needs a work-around. If you go to my forum (http://www.inniosoft.co.cc/devstation) and scroll to the Support Forum, there are meant to be forums as far as 2 sub-forums deep. The structure is this:

Support Forum

– Software Developemnt *1

— Child-Forum

-Website Development *1

— Child-Forum

Is there any way to put each *1 on a new line? I’m sure it’s easily done by checking $depth – but I don’t want to play too much in case.

PS: The styles and what not will be changed later – I know it looks a little scrappy now..

[Adam Harley (Kawauso)]

Replace

<?php		else :

if ( $prev_depth == 1 ) : ?>

<br />

<?php

else :

?>, <?php

endif;

?><a href="<?php forum_link(); ?>" title="<?php forum_description( array( 'before' => '', 'after' => '' ) ); ?>"><?php forum_name(); ?></a><?php

endif;

$prev_depth = $depth;

endwhile; ?>

with

<?php		else :

if ( $prev_depth < $depth ) : ?>

<br />

<?php

else :

?>, <?php

endif;

?><a href="<?php forum_link(); ?>" title="<?php forum_description( array( 'before' => '', 'after' => '' ) ); ?>"><?php forum_name(); ?></a><?php

if (  $prev_depth < $depth ) : ?>

<br />

<?php				endif;

endif;

$prev_depth = $depth;

endwhile; ?>

I think that should work

[Michael]

Doesn’t seem to work. It returned this: http://i.imagehost.org/0831/Screenshot-Dev_station_Mozilla_Firefox.jpg

Not to worry though – I’ll simply adjust the forums to reduce the clutter.

Thanks for your help – I really appreciate it