I have had trouble finding out how to integrate the phpBB forum into a CMS Made Simple content block (as to keep the template uniform). Is there some sort of trick that you have to skin the forum the same as the website? Or is it possible to have the content block of CMSms pull your forum right into it?
Please help!
Thanks in advance for your info!
-Bizza
Integrating phpBB into a CMSms Content Block
Re: Integrating phpBB into a CMSms Content Block
Hmm. No postings for over a year..
Anyhow: I am intrested in a solution to. Can someone help?
Anyhow: I am intrested in a solution to. Can someone help?
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alastair_scs
- Forum Members
- Posts: 23
- Joined: Sun Aug 17, 2008 6:41 pm
Re: Integrating phpBB into a CMSms Content Block
I never found a way to do this that was entirely satisfactory. There are suggestions using the embed tag or you can remove the external stuff from your PhpBB theme and then call it in an iframe inside your CMSMS site. For various reasons these aren't usually great ideas.
Basically, I think the approach is to skin your PhpBB template to match your CMSMS one. So you follow the methods for creating / editing a theme on your PhpBB install and put in the same markup as in your CMSMS template together with the necessary CSS.
It means that if you change the layout of your site, it now has to be changed in 2 places but it allows for pretty seamless, if not particularly quick and easy visual integration.
The main problem you'll probably come up against if you plan to hand the site over to someone without HTML knowledge is adding pages to the Navigation will not update the Navigation on your forum section (cause it's served from PhpBB).
You can write a bit of PHP in the phpBB theme to query your CMSMS database and construct a menu. I described one solution I used in this post http://forum.cmsmadesimple.org/index.ph ... 31545 (It is a total hack job so you'll need to know a bit of PHP to take it from there to what you need and I have no idea how smart it is but it works in the particular case it was used).
Another option would be to use an approach similar to that outlined in this post:
http://forum.cmsmadesimple.org/index.ph ... 233.0.html
The post deals with OsCommerce and ZenCart but I would imagine the same approach is viable.
Both solutions are probably a little hack ish and will need a little bit of PHP knowledge to get them working but hopefully it will help a bit.
Basically, I think the approach is to skin your PhpBB template to match your CMSMS one. So you follow the methods for creating / editing a theme on your PhpBB install and put in the same markup as in your CMSMS template together with the necessary CSS.
It means that if you change the layout of your site, it now has to be changed in 2 places but it allows for pretty seamless, if not particularly quick and easy visual integration.
The main problem you'll probably come up against if you plan to hand the site over to someone without HTML knowledge is adding pages to the Navigation will not update the Navigation on your forum section (cause it's served from PhpBB).
You can write a bit of PHP in the phpBB theme to query your CMSMS database and construct a menu. I described one solution I used in this post http://forum.cmsmadesimple.org/index.ph ... 31545 (It is a total hack job so you'll need to know a bit of PHP to take it from there to what you need and I have no idea how smart it is but it works in the particular case it was used).
Another option would be to use an approach similar to that outlined in this post:
http://forum.cmsmadesimple.org/index.ph ... 233.0.html
The post deals with OsCommerce and ZenCart but I would imagine the same approach is viable.
Both solutions are probably a little hack ish and will need a little bit of PHP knowledge to get them working but hopefully it will help a bit.
