Customizing phpBB's template

How to create a custom template for phpBB

phpBB is one of the most popular forums available online. Although the default phpBB template is nice and clean, you can choose to customize it to any look you want. This allows you to modify your forum to better match your website. The best part is, the templates are all held in files separate to the code, so you don't need to know how the forum works to change it's aesthetics.

Remember, always backup any files you plan to edit!!

1. 1. Login - The first thing you need to do is FTP into your site.

2. 2. Find the current template - From your forums main directory, it is by default in the subfolder /Templates/subSilver (subSilver is the name of the default template)

3. 3. Colors and Themes - You can edit your colors and other settings in the template's style sheet. By default this file is called subSilver.css

4. 4. Headers and Footers - You can change the headers and footers of your forum as well. These contain all the code that wraps around your PHP generated forum, and by editing them you can change the look of your page dramatically. These files are named overall_header.tpl and overall_footer.tpl

5. 5. Button Configuration - All of the images used in the template are found in the /images subfolder of the template directory. If you simply overwrite them with your own, you do not need to change anything. If you choose to have different file names or locations, you need to edit subSilver.cfg to point to the appropriate locations.

6. 6. Individual Pages - While the configuration files and header/footer files are global and apply to all the pages, the layout of many individual pages can also be customized. Each of the .tpl files in this directory corresponds to a page of your forum. For example, faq_body.tpl is the template for the FAQ page, and search_body.tpl is the template for the search page.