Website themes....

Anon

Ok...I have an idea to let users select the theme from a bunch of different ones. I want to have a few different possibilites of themes (I will use two for the example). If they go to the page through page.php3?theme=default I want it to load the 1st theme, and if they go to the page through page.php3?theme=stripes I want it to load the 2nd. I want them to be able to set a cookie that will last for 1 year that they can set and every page will automaticly load with the theme they want. Help with any of this is really, really appreciated.

Anon

The easiest way to do this would be to have separate sytlesheets for each theme. Then you would include the appropriate stylesheet based on the theme they selected.

Anon

Interestingly enough, i'm working on a similar idea for my site 😉 I want to be able to give users "skins" for the site. So that they can pick what they site looks like. However, it is more then simple CCS. It would be different graphics as well.

I haven't given it too much tought yet, but even though I could just use a bunch of if's that detect the cookie that tells me what Skin to use, that would slow down the site a lot i belive. The best approach I can think of is to have a set a dir called "skins" and in it named dirs for each skin. Then, on each main file on the site, call as an include the required Skin file....

Again, i havent looked into it much or even written any code, but I too would be interested to hear what the rest of you think.

Anon

As a matter of fact, I have recently seen a site which seemed to manage quite good. Let me contact the webmaster for you and see if he's willing to share some of his code with us.

NightOwl
www.de-bruyne.org

Anon

And here's already the reply... 🙂

Include a header whick depends upon the value of a cookie/dbfield to paste the right CSS.

The source of your page has to contain for every image

<pre>
<img src = "<?php echo $imagedir;?>/imagename.gif">
</pre>

where the var $imagedir depends upon the value of the cookie/dbfield.

all other skin-values (like bgcolor of tables etc) can be set the same way as the images...

That's how he does it, dunno if its usefull for you?

Anon

Vamsi- I don't know what a style sheet is or how to set one up 🙁

NightOwl- That probably would be the best way except I don't just want to change colors or pictures. I want to have a completly different layout for each theme.

John- Your idea seems the best, but what do you mean by "call as include"? Do you just mean the basic
<?
include "http://www.wickedjuggalos.com/guestbook.txt");
?>
code? And if so, how do I get the cookie to work with it and select the right script?

Anon

yow... i'm the guy NightOwl was talking about...
i've decided to share part of the code... a warning though : this code won't work without the mysql database i use, and even if you had that db it would probably give a lot of errors & warnings... but anyway, <a href=http://www.student.kuleuven.ac.be/~m9916964/example.tar.gz>here</a> you can download a tarball of the phpsources... too bad you can't visit my site : it's on an intranet (<a href=http://www.kotnet.org>KotNet</a>) for students of my university...

i hope you can do something with it...

Anon

uhm, seems like html-tags are not allowed in posts on this forum... on the forum on my site you can use them, even tables, so i hoped this forum supported html-tags as well... anywayz, you can see the link and i'm sure you'll be able to download the tarball in some way or another

Anon

I can't use .tar.gz files. If it's not too much of an inconvience could you get me a .zip, .exe, or .cab?

Anon

Though it would work (off course it would), you would be using an awfull lot of double code. Unless all of your pages are totaly different off course.

Anon

First visit that site, there is an example of it gamebase.sanane.com

Firstly you must make your skins and gýve them names (etc. 1, 2, 3, ...). Then you must write a scrit like that:
When someone has entered site my site must make a data.dat documnet on their Windows or usr directory. And When they first entered teh site data.dat must include 1 number in itself. When they changed the skin the number must change, and when they enter the site again the site must read the number from data.dat and open the numbered site.
If there were anyone who wants that code i can do it for them. But u must mail it to me first (the number of skins and the name of skins!).

                                                                              PCc0d3r

Anon

PCc0d3r wrote:

When someone has entered site my site must make a data.dat documnet on their Windows or

Comment :

On their Windows system ? How do you write a document on their system? Or do you mean a cookie?

Anon

tsss... windoze lusers... =)
you'll probably have corrupt line endings in the source files, linux (unix) uses just chr(10) for a \n (newline), but windows (dos) uses chr(13) chr(10)... but i guess there are some "smart" programs that detect the type of line endings... not notepad i think, but i guess if you view it with netscape and save it again it will have the right line endings... if not for the //-comments, you wouldn't even need line endings =)

http://www.student.kuleuven.ac.be/~m9916964/example.zip

Anon

Get a program called PHPNuke.
That uses "SKINS" and you can see how he uses them. It works great. To see an example, go here and register then you can choose a skin:

http://bill.datapipe.net

Anon

Hallo