Using a different theme only for the frontpage?

[MsMudia]

Is it possible to use two different themes - one for the front page and one for the forum?? I try to explain why I need that:

I have a website (http://www.dream-collector.de with hundreds of single pages and beside this a separated SMF forum with TP (http://www.dream-collector.de/SMF/index.php.
Now I want to integrate my website into SMF and use TP as a CMS using the article function for my whole pages (I think it looks nicer if website and forum have the same design).
For this I created a new theme with a new header and a new main-menu (more info see my signature, this version is still in testmode).

Now I want to have the "opened book" on the front page and another theme with the same header but no book in the forum (see the attached files), but I found no possibility to say in the ACP: "use another theme for the frontpage". Is it anyway possible?? If so, how can I do this?

I also need to place the content on the front page to the right side of the book (see red arrow in the attachment). Does anybody know, where this is defined? Sorry for the question, but I am a totally noob concerning CSS - I needed 2 month to create this theme (especially the menu) only with CSS! So please explain it very easy so that I am able to understand!

Or should I open a new topic for that last question??

Thanks for your help...

[Zetan]

Hello MsMudia, it's possible and in fact a feature.

If you have an Article on the Front Page (it can be empty), you can set an Article theme. This will Overide any other theme set.

1, one... an.. Article featured on the Home/Front page

• Admin > TinyPortal / Articles and Categories > Use only this theme: Select Theme
  
  This entirely depends on how you have your front page set up
  
  [edit] I need to explain.. Every Article has theme options. These will overide the overall site theme, if selected.

[MsMudia]

Hi, thanks for your really quick answer!!

I think I got it now! I played a little bit with the options and settings. I didn't know that I could set an article to be "featured on frontpage" and then set the settings for the frontpage to "featured article". I did this now and when I now call the index.php there is my created (empty) article with the frontpage-theme!!
Is this now correct??

But that would mean that I must chose this frontpage-theme for all my articles ??

Anyway thank you very much for your help - I see a little bit clearer concerning articles now...  :up:

edit: does anybody have an idea for the content that should be shown on the right side of the book? And how I could set the background to "no background" - so that there is only the text on the book page? I think I have to change the CSS for the content-field - but what is the correct place to change these settings?? I hope you understand what I mean...

I have to sleep now... Good night...

[Crip]

.. also each article must be placed / added within a [ Category ] ..

[ZarPrime]

MsMudia,

I must say that I am extremely impressed with the work you have done.  It looks excellent. :up:

Zetan told you how you can select one theme for your Front Page and an other for the rest.   In fact, your Front Page theme could indeed be something along the lines of what you have in your second pic, with the a similar but slightly different theme like you have in your 1st pic for the rest of the site.  Since the 2 themes can have different style.css files you can setup the wrapper for your featured article to be constrained within the page on the right side of the book.   The other thing to be aware of is that TP allows the Front Page to be setup as a single article or page, though this feature may only be available in the TP 1.x versions.  For this reason, to make that work, you will probably have to upgrade TP from 0.98 to 1.0 beta 3 (or beta4 when it come out).

You have done a great job here.  If you choose to go with a single page for the Front Page in the newer version of TP, there is a site that Bloc told us about here on the team board that might be of interest to you.  It is a CSS system that gives you greater control over placement of items on your page and it's very powerful.  I've started experimenting with it myself a little.  If you want to see it, click here --> http://960.gs/

Keep up the good work.  I certainly hope that once you have completed it, you will grace our Showcase Board with it's presence.

ZarPrime

[MsMudia]

.. also each article must be placed / added within a [ Category ] ..

Yes, I read that in certain posts here that this is the difference to the old 0.9.8 version. For my website this is very good, because I just have categories (e. g. the menu button "bandinfos" contains the item "interviews" - that could be the category and within the item interviews there are the hundreds of interviews).

@ZarPrime: thank you very much...

But I think you didn't see the code of the site yet... I am a real real beginner in using CSS and had to take all my needed information from the website http://de.selfhtml.org/index.htm... There is still one mistake in the CSS for the Firefox user... But I will ask this question in the SMF forum, since it does not belong to TP... 

Since the 2 themes can have different style.css files you can setup the wrapper for your featured article to be constrained within the page on the right side of the book.

Yes, I just have two different style.css, one for the frontpage theme and one for the forum theme. Do you mean, I have to create a wrapper in the tp-style.css for the content? And this wrapper must be in the TPBlockLayout.template.php above all, directly beneath the body tag? And this wrapper the background could have the option "none" - correct??
(Sorry for the question, just have in mind I'm just learning how to use CSS and how SMF is built... Sometimes I think I'm too old for such things... )

Now I am really confused - on my testsite I just use TP 1.0 Beta3... (look at my signature: http://testforum.dream-collector.de/SMF/index.php). But I didn't found the option using a single article for the frontpage... Maybe I have to switch the language in my forum back to English... It's confusing when you talk about that in english and I have to search for the German equivalent... 
And when I use this CSS tool - I can integrate that without problems into TP??

So, what would you say about how I should use my website? A single frontpage with the CSS system you mentioned in your post? Would this be the best alternative??



PS: One far day - when my page is ready - I am glad to show it in your Showcase Board...

[MsMudia]

Sorry for posting a 2. time...

I found out that the TPBLockLayout-Dingens doesn't have a body tag... Sorry for my ignorance...

So does anybody have an idea where to place the wrapper? Must it be a wrapper? Isn't there a place within the php file, where the textfield of an article is defined?? Then I could say: it should have a width of e. g. 400px and should have a position of left 400px and top 300px (for example).
Can anybody help me?


I think the method with the single frontpage which has another theme is working fine for me. But it would be nice for my moderators, if the articles on the frontpage all will have automatically another theme than the forum. Could I say this by using CSS?
Does anybody know where I can say these articles that they should have a special theme?

Please help me (btw: I don't know anything about php... it's just hieroglyphics for me...  )


EDIT: @Crip: you have created so much themes.... what would you do, if you had to place the text of an article in this little place of the right book side?? PLEASE HELP *cry*

[Zetan]

In response to a PM

Sorry to bother you but I didn't think I should bump a super old thread or make a new one for this.  I've quoted you below.  Is using the featured article set theme the easiest way to do this?  I know I'll probably always have a featured article, so I'm guessing that's the simplest way to use 2 themes one on the front page and another on the forums?

Hello MsMudia, it's possible and in fact a feature.

If you have an Article on the Front Page (it can be empty), you can set an Article theme. This will Override any other theme set.

1, one... an.. Article featured on the Home/Front page

• Admin > TinyPortal / Articles and Categories > Use only this theme: Select Theme
  
  This entirely depends on how you have your front page set up
  
  [edit] I need to explain.. Every Article has theme options. These will override the overall site theme, if selected.
  

Hi Michael, I don't usually respond to PM's for support (it says so in my signature) and since the subject is still relevant, you could have asked in the topic or started a new one referencing the post you have quoted. I haven't been online all weekend as the connection to my ISP is down (Just noticed you PMed this to me today).

In answer to your question; There is no other way, using current standard TP settings, to have a different theme between the forum and the home page using TinyPortal.

You don't really need to have any content in the article, but you might have a blank horizontal bar on the home page depending on how options are set.



Example of using an article without content, solely for the purpose of a different home page theme:

Admin > TinyPortal > Articles and Categories > Settings

• Hide the edit article link under articles?  Yes / No (Setting NO will produce a thin bar visible to Guests) / Setting YES will hide the bar, but will also remove the Edit Link from Admin view).
  
  For the actual article:
  
  
• Do not use title/frame
  
• Details (All OFF)
  
• Panels (Select as appropriate)
  
• Others (Select as appropriate)
  
• Use only this theme (Select Theme)
  
  
  Other than using a blank featured article, just use one featured article as normal with it's theme set... Just don't forget it has been set as we do get questions about why the home page is different to the rest of the site, usually when a new theme has been installed in SMF.
  
  
  I have replied to the PM, but I'm posting it here also, for reference.

[bloc]

There is one setting that will give you a blank page, with only html/head/body tags. Meaning you can pretty much decide how the entire page will look like. It will add SMF copyright right before </body> though. The setting is "do not use SMF templates". That should give you total freedom.

In addition you might like to load various header code, like javascript, stylesheets, normally going into the <head> tag. There is a textarea where you can add such things too, its called "Header code to be used in articles without any template/theme code:".

Unfortunately none of this works on the other frontpage options, like "show forums/articles" for example. Its only available on "featured article", as its purpose is to be a blank canvas for a frontpage.