Joomla and IPB

[Jay_7]

I've got IPB installed now, what's the easiest way to get it to look like the joomla part of the site? Edit an existing skin or start from scratch?

[Scotty]

We used a copy of the classic skin and modified it to suit.

some modifications are in the CSS files, others are in the various page templates. If you login to the client area of the IPB site you will find several things that will help. there are tutorials showing some good skin edits as well as PDF files that deal with the various settings and editing the CSS.

[+CaleyD]

Easier to adjust an existing skin.

Spend a little time looking for one that's as close as possible to what you want (at least in terms of structure) and then go from there.

[Jay_7]

Cheers guys. Hopefully I'll get a chance to look at this pretty soon - I'm due some time off from work after replacing their domain controller at the weekend.

[Jay_7]

Just thought I'd give an update on this. Everything's in place now but I think I'll stick with the standard IPB Pro skin. When I'm feeling adventurous I might tackle changing the other skin that comes with it.

[Jay_7]

Did this site encounter any issues with IE8 when it was released? The Joomla part of my site displays ok in IE8 but it's almost as if IE8 can't read the IPB part of the site.

Ok it's doing it in Firefox as well now Screen shot of what's going on below:

Any ideas?

Edited April 16, 2009 by Jay_7

[Scotty]

its not reading the stylesheet for some reason. Do you have any SEF components installed or anything like that ? It doesnt look like you have in Joomla, but did you add anything to IPB ?

Also check that your CSS folder and files are CHMODded to 755 as the CSS for the lo-fi version loads ok but not the one for the main version.

[Jay_7]

I think I've got it sussed - but not 100% certain. The way I had it set up in a folder was bugging me so I set up a new subdomain and uploaded it to there and installed it on a brand new MYSQL database. First thing I did was logged into the admin CP and ran all the tools in the admin tab. After this, the new installation does it again. Looks to me like it's one of the tools that's doing it. Any idea which one would cause that to happen?

[Scotty]

it may be quite simple ..... does your joomla link point to the old folder perchance ? it may be loading the old forum not your new one and if you have changed the structure the file may not exist

[Jay_7]

it may be quite simple ..... does your joomla link point to the old folder perchance ? it may be loading the old forum not your new one and if you have changed the structure the file may not exist

I wasn't using the Joomla link. I was going straight to the new subdomain where the forum installation was. Surely if it was caching, it wouldn't do the same thing in a different location?

I've deleted the new installation again but this time kept the database, so when I get home tonight I'll upload it all again - and I won't be running any of the tools this time.

[Jay_7]

OK I've got everything back in place. I think it's the "Make "conf_global" un-writeable" tool in the Admin section that was causing all the trouble. No idea what it does but I'm not pressing it again.

Seems I've got to grips at least with the easy CSS colour changer bit in the Look and Feel section.

2 more things to do with appearance, and then I'll be happy with it though. First off; how can I make the user links at the top and also the stats links appear white? I've tried changing the font colour and it's not doing anything to the links.

Secondly I'd like to make a jpg appear below the user links bar but above the navigation - is this possible?

Edit: to add screen shot with annotations to show what I mean...

Edited April 17, 2009 by Jay_7

[Scotty]

for your links you will need to adjust your CSS file

#userlinks p, #userlinksguest p is the style for the whole bar

a:link, a:visited, a:active & a:hover is the style for each link

if you install FF Web developer toolbar use CSS > View Style Information and then click various bits of the member bar to see what it is picking up from your stylesheet(s)

For the banner, the easiest way to add it - in the same way we added our adsense banner - is to go via the admin back-end to Look and Feel > Edit Template HTML and select All Global HTML. When that loads go to the very bottom of the file and add your code for the image. We surrounded our code with <div align="center">...</div> to make sure it lined up right.

[Jay_7]

for your links you will need to adjust your CSS file

#userlinks p, #userlinksguest p is the style for the whole bar

a:link, a:visited, a:active & a:hover is the style for each link

if you install FF Web developer toolbar use CSS > View Style Information and then click various bits of the member bar to see what it is picking up from your stylesheet(s)

For the banner, the easiest way to add it - in the same way we added our adsense banner - is to go via the admin back-end to Look and Feel > Edit Template HTML and select All Global HTML. When that loads go to the very bottom of the file and add your code for the image. We surrounded our code with <div align="center">...</div> to make sure it lined up right.

Cheers Scotty, got the banner up now. Unfortunately the a:link, a:visited a:active & a:hover seems to change the colour of the links to the actual forums as well. Might just need to keep them black I think...

[Scotty]

yeah, they will ....unless you go into the code and set the links in there to use a different class name.

[Jay_7]

OK - here's the latest thing. The htacess.txt file. I just can't wrap my head around it. What does it do and why does it cause so much grief? Ever since I renamed the file to .old my site performs much, much better and it minimises the Error 500 occurances. When I rename it to .htaccess, I get a "could not connect to database" error.

Is it a good idea to just leave it as a file name that can't be referenced like .old - or should I put it back to htaccess.txt and figure out what it is in the file that's causing so many problems?

[Scotty]

.htaccess is a simple text file but oh so important. Your site will run without it, but the standard file in Joomla can perform some fairly important tasks such as detecting hack attempts and blocking them, password protecting directories such as admin, denying certain IP addresses or domains, setting up your SEF URLs, and so much more.

Read this page which explains it far better than I can: http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/htaccess.shtml

On a practical level, we use it on our main (CTO) pages to do our JOOMLA SEF URLs and to block common exploits.

On the Forum site we use it to deny file access to certain files/directories and to point to our local compiled copy of PHP. We have to use a local copy of PHP as certain settings in our hosting provider's copy are turned on/off by default and we need them set the other way.

One thing about .htaccess though is that a simple 1 character error will throw up many Internal 500 server errors so if you get that when changing it from htaccess.txt (which is ignored) to .htaccess then you need to look at what is in it.

[Jay_7]

Even with all of the code blanked with the # key, when the file is called .htaccess it just will not display the page. I get a permanent error 500

I just don't get why it's doing it!

[Scotty]

if you want to send content i can have a look later. email scotty AT caleythistleonline DOT COM