Any steps/tips for putting vanilla "into" a custom html front page

qh3

Hello all, I hope I could get some feedback on a general question that would probably be useful for other new users:

I am new to vanilla but have some basic website building experience with html and css. I want to integrate vanilla into a front page which would basically be an html page with css, with spaces for different things. I plan to develop a community and have quite a few adverts, so I need a bunch of spaces which are suitable for that, and other spaces would be for different things from vanilla, like login, new discussions, new users, and especially the newest or most popular posts from some of the forum categories, all on the front page. This will bring in the users directly to an interesting new topic, or they can click on all categories to see an overview of all the forums.

I have a designer I have worked with before to make a nice html page using css for placement, but what I am worried about is integrating that page with vanilla. Can I just make the names of the various elements in the css compatible with vanilla?

I must admit I haven't looked at the code too carefully yet, that's my next step. But I want to get this html design going soon.

My idea is basically this, I would get an html/css document with something like:

hash_leftsideboxforlogin
width: 100px;
height: 200px;
border: 1px black;
float:left;
clear:both;

and my current understanding is that i think I can change that to:

hash_namedefinedbyvanillaforlogin
width: 100px;
height: 200px;
border: 1px black

And I would be ok? Then vanilla knows where I want a particular view?

I am still at an early stage but need to get some sense about how this integration is going to happen, basically because I am going to be the one doing it! I am a bit of a hacker in terms of using copy-paste code to get where I need to be, but I can get a lot of basic stuff done.

Any help to understand this conceptually at this stage would be wonderful! Thank you all very much for any contribution!

vrijvlinder

You can simply embed the forum in you html page wherever that is. Look at the tutorial category there are some explanations and how to info.

You don't edit the forum until you know where it is going to go. For a static html page , just embed it using the code in the dashboard or the iframe.

qh3

I don't know how to put code in here. That's intended to be css code.

qh3

Learning more, it looks like I am right. Just edit default.master.tpl and the related css file and its...off to the races? Hmm, this is going to be fun... :-P

vrijvlinder

You can simply embed the forum in you html page wherever that is. Look at the tutorial category there are some explanations and how to info.

You don't edit the forum until you know where it is going to go. For a static html page , just embed it using the code in the dashboard or the iframe.

qh3

Thanks for the feedback, I am reading up on it now and it makes perfect sense. I am sure there will be some bumps in the road but it should be fine. I guess I just had to get my thoughts out and on paper to see things clearly