Turning Tiny Portal on/off?

[Artimidor]

Hello!

I have a general - hopefully easy - question I'd like to clarify before I try to do something serious with Tiny Portal. Here it is: Is it possible to easily turn on and off a Tiny Portal through a setting in a configuration file when needed?

I'd like to install a SMF board with a theme that has a Tiny Portal already integrated, but until I know more about how to work with Tiny Portal I'd like to have the option to turn it off for the users. Would this require going through all the code of various PHP files (I see there are lots of references), or can it be done easier? I see in the readme file of Tiny Portal for example that you have to add several passages manually once you want to add it to a theme, so I was wondering if you'd need to remove them all again to deactivate Tiny Portal. Or is it even a matter of adjusting that simply through the updated SMF control panel?

Any advice on this would be appreciated!

Artimidor

[Crip]

If you have TP installed on a smf Forum, you don't have to (turn-it-off) - and you can't -- with a TP Theme with Up shrinks, you simply collapse + / - both right & /left side Blocks.. and you then have a regular smf Forum..just let your members know how to collapse and Expand the side blocks..with the /left/right blocks collapsed you could say TP is "(turned-off)" ...

[Artimidor]

Yep, I've seen that you can expand and collapse it with a link within the theme.

However, you obviously cannot completely disable it temporarily so that users cannot expand it or see that someone is working on this part until it's finished - without having to completely remove all the references in various PHP files, right?

Or could it be accomplished to start the Forum with a shrinked Tiny Portal (is there a setting?) and disable the expand link temporarily? That would have the same effect I assume.

Artimidor

[agridoc]

Artimidor the best way to play and learn TP (also any other mod for SMF) is have a test install in your PC or another directory in your server.

This way you will have the freedom to work as you want, overcome possible problems without interrupting your site' s operation and install it in your forum when you will feel ready about it.

In theory, it' s technicalyy possible to have a frontpage showning only forum and have all the blocks with admin only permissions until decided if and what to display.

[bloc]

Agridoc's last suggestion is very good..just make all blocks admin-only, and turn off dl manager + frontapge go directly to forum. Then you can experiment with it and turn them on again later on. Of course the copyright will give away things though..

I haven't added a "turn it all off" option simply becuase there seemed there was no need for it.

[Xarcell]

Or as suggested before, it can be a theme related instance. All theme creators need is an example code to use. I'm a little too php dense to figure it out.

Theme Option:  admin > current theme > enable/disable TP.

[Nokonium]

Another possible way to investigate,  is to have an admin only board and use a TP theme only on that board. TP will not show up on non TP themes.

[Xarcell]

Ya, you could have 2 versions of the same theme. Normal and TP installed. That's the easiest way to do it until some theme designers add that options to turn TP  on/off in theme settings.

Just make the default what you want everyone to use.

[IchBin]

I see no need to do something like having two themes installed. If you turn on the option to "display forum" on the front page, then disable all the blocks you won't even notice TP is there. Mean while you're still using a TP theme so you can test things as an admin before you go live to the rest of the members.

Preferably though, I would just use a test install on another forum instead of my live site.

[Artimidor]

Okeydokey, thanks for the help everyone

I guess I should go ahead and install the theme and play around with the suggested things, it should be possible methinks to get the effect one or way or another

Artimidor