A few questions

skyblueshoes

Alright I've got a few questions and I've waited long enough to build up some to ask all at once, lol. I love this Vanilla engine so much, I'm building my entire site around it, which requires a few mods...

MODS
1. How can I make the start page different from Discussions? ie: my homepage tab
2. How do you change the browser's page title/status bar message depending on which tab is selected?
3. How can I override and change the order of the Discussion/Category tabs and make them appear at the end
4. How can I do away with the Account Tab at the top and just make it a link on the Panel?

Themes
1. I can't figure out all the elements, immediately I'd like to know which element controls the text on the search forms, ie: Search, Topics, etc.
2. Is there a reference as to which elements control what? I'm confused as hell and the trial and error thing just isn't work out as quick as I'd like.

If anyone would like to see my theme/mods so far:
   http://skyblue.mine.nu/forum/

Mark

1. How can I make the start page different from Discussions? ie: my homepage tab

I'd say the easiest way is to use an htaccess file and make apache point to a different file by default when accessing the folder root.

2. How do you change the browser's page title/status bar message depending on which tab is selected?

switch ($Context->SelfUrl) { case 'index.php': $Context->PageTitle = 'Whatever'; break; default: $Context->PageTitle = 'Something else'; break; }

3. How can I override and change the order of the Discussion/Category tabs and make them appear at the end

in conf/settings:

$Configuration['TAB_POSITION_DISCUSSIONS'] = '60'; $Configuration['TAB_POSITION_CATEGORIES'] = '70';

4. How can I do away with the Account Tab at the top and just make it a link on the Panel?

// First remove the tab: $AccountUrl = GetUrl($Configuration, 'account.php'); $Menu->RemoveTab($AccountUrl); // Then add it to the panel: $Panel->AddListItem('Options', 'Your Profile', $AccountUrl);

1. I can't figure out all the elements, immediately I'd like to know which element controls the text on the search forms, ie: Search, Topics, etc.

First of all, always make sure that you are NOT editing the files in the root themes folder. You should be creating a new theme within that folder and copying the files you want to edit into that folder. Read more about themes here.

The search form template is here: themes/search_form.php

2. Is there a reference as to which elements control what? I'm confused as hell and the trial and error thing just isn't work out as quick as I'd like.

At the top of every template file it says which file it is included from. You can also get a general idea about what templates files are for here.

skyblueshoes

wow, you're just full of answers...thanks a bunch...I think I'm starting to get the hang of the OO format, it all seems pretty standard within Vanilla, but maybe we can pursuade someone to completely document all the tags, OOP models, and even the obscure references...lol If ya can find someone willing that is...

SkyBlueshoes

Mark

Release is #1 on my list right now. When Vanilla is finished, and the vanilla service is up and running, I will document the source code and write a parser to generate documentation straight from source.

skyblueshoes

awesome....hmmmm, what else can I bug you about?