Hi all...first post here and I want to say this management system looks great. First, I do have a decent understanding of HTML and some javascript so I do understand a little of what is contained here but searching and reading files like heck to get an understanding of how this all links together. Now this is what I did.. what I am trying to do..and wonder if I am on the right track understanding it. Yikes!!

I installed XOOPS from a program my host provided and the installation went great. I browsed these forums..was finally able to change the logo to mine and then tried to jump in headfirst. Well..I made a big splash..was happy..then found that I drowned. LOL. My site is a fantasy football site and I want members, so XOOPS looked ideal to me because i can limit access to certain pages unless they join. I already had a site written mostly in HTML and javascript and figured I could incorporate this into Xoops. My main problem is my navigation Menu.

Not really understanding how blocks worked but noticing how when I added HTML and javascript code into the theme.html file which is how i got my logo to work, I editted the heck out of it. I double browsed and by refreshing I was able to see the changes. All my navigation including mouseover buttons appeared perfect down the left side. I then shut off the main menus in admin preferences and all seemed fine. 2 problems. The first was now i had no way to get back into my administration since I had no link back to the admin page (which I finally figured out by just logging in and typing the URL pointing to the admin page, but really don't want to have to do that) and the 2'nd was being a dummy, i did copy and paster the original theme code to notepad..but alas..forgot to save it right away.. I froze..and had to do a manual shutdown..thereby losing my original theme code. Bummer. So if anyone knows where i can get the default code for this it would be appreciated. Version 2.0.7

After doing more research tho in admin.. I did notice you can edit blocks. I cloned a template, giving it a name pertaining to my site, changed the default to point to that and now that can be editted. Well I think. So if I'm thinking straight.. I could start back with my original theme..editting the header part to get my logo back.. and change the html and stylesheet in blockleft, adding a button with a link matching my buttons..edit main menu and user menu. Then what I have already done as far as html coding will be taken over by the block. How far off base am I??

Also right now my redirect..which I still don't really understand is pointing to my index.html file..but what I really want is the main page to be where members can sign in and/or join..and be my index.php page..and then redirect to my index html file..so at that point it doesn't have the login boxes. I created custom buttons for navigation for links to all the items in the user menu in that index.html. I guess what I am asking is I would like my index.php to be the same as my index.html only including the sign-up parts.

Thank you in advance.

Mike

Why won't you include your index.html file into index.php?

Or make a block to be displayed on index.php, and put your index.html in there?

That is what I really don't know yet about using XOOPS I guess. I know what i want to do.. but don't understand yet..HOW to do it. I'm making some of my site appear the way I want it, but so far have only really editted the style sheets for color changes and the default theme.html files.

What I did to the default theme.html file was insert the logo..take out the code that controls the left block and inserted the html code that I had written below the header codes which inserted my navigation menus running down the left side of the page in a table. I linked the buttons I created to the default pages of the user and main menus of XOOPS so when you click on them, they work just as it would when it was first installed. But before I go further I realize that to access admin functions I need that block, though I could create a button linking to the /admin index page. In admin preferences..if i turn on the block..the default as well as my custom navigation menus appear on my inner XOOPS pages. So looking further into it I figured that I could edit the template if I created a clone which I did and named, set it for default, which I did also. But the clone at the moment is exactly the same as default. Before I editted the clone I want to be sure that I am approaching this the right way.

Maybe I'm having a hard time explaining it correctly. I just thought if I could get the original theme.html back..which I lost due to my own stupidity not saving as noted above and would like to get back, that I could change the header section so my own logo and graphics appear on top.. then edit the left block template so it includes only my navigation menu. And then do the same for each block an/or template.. thereby preserving for the moment the original set-up of the XOOPS default which is really close to what my site was written in HTML to be.

Thanks for the response

If you downloaded the XOOPS files, the original theme (default) will still be in the zip file, in the /themes folder. Just upload that.

A better way to do a custom menu, is to make a custom block (HTML), put everything you want into it, and set it to go where you want.

If you look at http://www.scac.asn.au the "Ministries" menu is a custom block. You could do the same thing but make it look the way you want.

Thank you Bassman... I think I have the idea now.. as far as the original theme file. My host has a program that auto-installed XOOPS on my server.. which was cool. What i will do is download the file to my computer and access the theme file from there and upload it to the specified folder. I'll rename my original file theme1 or something like that so iI can refer to it to see how the changes I make work in relation to what I have done so far. I'm a newbie to this so expect more questions ...lol.. but I am confident once I get the hang of the XOOPS structure..my site will look great.

Thank you again

Cool.

Just remember, just changing the folder name is a good way to end up with a blank page. If you change a theme's folder name, you have to change all instances of the name in your theme.html file to match - there's 5 instances in most of them.

Exactly... I just downloaded the XOOPS program to my computer so I can play with it there using Dreamweaver and get an idea how to move things around also. I just uploaded the theme.html. BTW.. i left all the folder names intact...just renamed the default theme I had to theme1.html and placed the theme.html original I just downloaded in it's place, in the same folder. Now to try and work on this block and get the ball rolling again. Thanks again.