Embedding Forum

[Migrated From Jforum.net]

Hi , how can i embed your forum into website and is there any ready templates to change design for black background sites?.
[originally posted on jforum.net by kadirbasol]

[Migrated From Jforum.net]

There are two main issues to consider when doing this:

The first is "How to handle user login". If your main site does not require a login, then using jForum's login mechanism is the easiest.

If you're site requires a login and you don't want users to have to login a second time, you will need to look at the Single Sign On (SSO) methods available.

The next issue is what you're asking about... how do I make it look good with my site? Most people use one of two ways:

The easiest is to modify the header and footer template files so that the "wrapper" around the forum matches your current site (that's what is done for this site).

If that doesn't meet your needs, the next option is to look at embedding jforum in an I-frame from your existing site. The general method here is to cut the header and footer template files down to just HTML header and ending code so that jforum only returns the "center" section info.

In both cases, you might need to look at modifying the CSS and images to make this look like your site. This isn't very hard.. the only "tricky" part is if you are supporting multiple languages, you may need to create multiple different "buttons", e.g. PostReply, etc. Note that these are referenced in the language specific CSS files.

AFAIK, there is no "black background" skin... contributions are always welcome via JIRA if you want to develop one.
[originally posted on jforum.net by monroe]

[Migrated From Jforum.net]

Well , its good we want to combine your project with jsftemplating.
Thats why we need to learn how to add adding skin , embedding forum into jsftemplating as a component.
We know how to add SSO capability.
But we need more information about adding custom skin images , transparency , forum background color.

[originally posted on jforum.net by kadirbasol]

[Migrated From Jforum.net]

For the most part, the source is the documentation in this area. You will need to roll up your sleeves and dig into it... but the source in this case is for the most part standard HTML, CSS with a little Freemarker (www.freemarker.org) scripting.

All the look and feel of jForum is done via Freemarker templates (and standard CSS/HTML). The "default" templates are located in the template/default directory. For each "page type" in jForum, there is a matching template file. These are mostly HTML with some simple script language included.

Note that all of these templates will include a the contents of the header.htm and bottom.htm. These are use to define the "wrapper" around the code generated pages.

FWIW, a quick low coding method of "skinning" would be to not worry about the templates, etc at first... but to just to display one or more jForum pages and do a "save as" from IE. This will create a pure HTML file that you can load into your favorite HTML editor (e.g. Dreamweaver, et al) and then just work on getting your look and feel by modifying the CSS and images.

Then back track this into the jforum site. This work fine as long as you keep to CSS and images. However, if you need to change the structure or add includes / events to tags, and the like, you will need to then start modifying the template files.

FYI, a "best practice" for templates is to copy the "default" template directory to a new directory (at the same level). Then change your forum config properties to use this new template. This lets you keep the original for reference and helps when the version changes, etc.
[originally posted on jforum.net by monroe]