Theme: Difference between revisions From Online Manual

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A theme is what defines the look and feel of your forum, and sometimes third-party extensions to it. All installations of SMF should start out with the default theme, although it can be disabled by the administrator.
An SMF theme is what defines the look and feel of your forum -- what is sometimes referred to as "skin". Every new installation of SMF comes with the default theme.  The administrator is free to install other themes, and to choose which of the installed themes to enable.  


Themes can be managed in the Themes and Layout section of the administration center. From there, you can install themes, make copies of themes, and change theme settings and options.
Themes are managed in the [[Themes and Layout]] section of the administration center -- theme settings and options can be change, new themes can be installed or created as copies of existing themes, and even editted from here.SMF comes with a limit of 256 installed themes, and Themes and Layout administration is designed to deal with fewer than 100 installed themes.


A good way to think of themes is as "plugins", which contain a collection of templates, language files, images, stylesheets, and other files. While editing these files can be a bit technical, the layout is separated from the content allowing you to make and distribute or sell your own themes. For information on theme authoring, please see the theme authoring category.
Each theme consists of a collection of templates written in php, plus translatable text strings (in language files), accompanied by images, stylesheets, and other files. The SMF software finishes creating all the page content before calling on the theme's template files. This separation of content from layout makes it possible to completely rearrange the way content is presented on a page without needing to make any changes to how the software creates the content. The [[Category:Developing_Themes|Developing Themes]] category of this manual has more information on creating SMF themes.
 
If you are looking to download already made themes, please see the Graphics and Templates board on the community forum.
 
You are limited, in a standard install, to having 256 themes installed. It is possible to raise this limit, but theme administration has not been designed for themes in the hundreds.  


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Revision as of 13:08, 24 April 2012

An SMF theme is what defines the look and feel of your forum -- what is sometimes referred to as "skin". Every new installation of SMF comes with the default theme. The administrator is free to install other themes, and to choose which of the installed themes to enable.

Themes are managed in the Themes and Layout section of the administration center -- theme settings and options can be change, new themes can be installed or created as copies of existing themes, and even editted from here.SMF comes with a limit of 256 installed themes, and Themes and Layout administration is designed to deal with fewer than 100 installed themes.

Each theme consists of a collection of templates written in php, plus translatable text strings (in language files), accompanied by images, stylesheets, and other files. The SMF software finishes creating all the page content before calling on the theme's template files. This separation of content from layout makes it possible to completely rearrange the way content is presented on a page without needing to make any changes to how the software creates the content. The category of this manual has more information on creating SMF themes.



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