I am new to Xoops. I have seen some sites made from Xoops, and they look awesome. How do I design the look and feel to my site?

Where do I go to get templates or themes to my website? It says I need a "tar" file or something. Can someone please help me?

unsure wot you mean but i edit my colors etc within my server files, i can chose from 3 templates,(default,phpkaox,x2t) all within the server files html/frontpage/themes.


I select the template i wish to edit (in this case x2t)
then edit stuff like colors etc at the style.css
im fairly new to this myself so i guess someone else mite give you a better description

Themes

Three themes come with your XOOPS install. They are located here:

yoursite.com/themes/
default
x2t
phpkaox

To change your default theme you go to system admin /preferences / general settings and the "Default theme" dropdown box. The theme called "default" is the theme that loads on install.

To edit the look of your theme you can go to your theme folder and edit theme.html and style.css inside the folder. Some themes also have styleNN.css for Netscape, and styleMAC.css for Mac computers.

If you are trying to edit the theme.html in your themes folder and nothing changes, you set "Update module template .html files from themes/your theme/templates directory" to "yes" in general settings.

Templates:

Most themes use the default "Template". Templates control the layout of individual modules. Most themes are based on the XOOPS "default" template.

You can't edit the "default template", but you can clone it, and edit the clone. Just click "clone" in system admin/templates, and call this clone anything you wish. After you have done this, go to system admin/preferences/general settings and make the clone your "default" Template (not theme)

Some themes come with their own tar/gzip templates. In your extras folder their is a "tar" template for the x2t theme. To upload it go to system admin/templates, and go to the upload browse box and browse to this "tar" file in your local computers XOOPS download:

extras/theme_x2t/x2t.tar.gz

You can call this anything you like. After you have done this, go to system admin/preferences/general settings, and make x2t your default "Theme", and chosse the "Template" you named. (there is drop downs for both)

Then go back to system admin/templates, and you will see a tick to the right of your default template. You may need to to click " generate" to create the files for individual modules you install.

See this on the "Wiki" for more explanation about Themes and Templates"

http://wiki.xoops.org/wakka.php?wakka=ThemesVsTemplates

You can download themes and upload them into:

yoursite.com/themes

Once again go to system admin /preferences /general settings, and make your new theme your default.

A handy tool for visually editing themes is to launch the theme changing "block", this will allow you to see and edit the appearance of the themes without changing the default theme. To do this go to system admin/blocks and activate the "Themes" block.

In system admin "groups" you can make this block only visible to webmasters.

I don't have a list of site right now for themes, but type "theme" in the search box and you should get some results

Hi. Thank you very much. I am still trying to work on that. I see a lot of nice XOOPS sites, and I have been trying to figure out how in the world did they create them like that.

I am really confused on all that "tar" file business. I have read that Wiki Templates/Themes doc. 4 times already and I am still stuck. This is my first time using this, and I am sure it may be easier for those who are use to developing content management sites.

Oh, and by the way, I like your site. Take yours for instance...how did you design the look and feel of your site? I seen the docs and it explained the differece between themes and templates.

I wish someone could walk me through this thing.

I don't know if this helps, but a .tar.gz file is simply the Linux analog of a .zip file. WinZip can open a .tar.gz file, and PHP also has functions for reading it.