Question about coding a forum and Tutorials

StarDruid

I've been look to find a very simple forums for a site I'm building for a fansite about an anime/manga Called Aria. Need a super simple one like this http://ykk.misago.org/Forum to fit the feel of the site and the anime/manga. But phpBB and similar are too complexe to suit the site and registration is also out of touch with it.

Sadly the owner of the YKK site has been missing for a long time so can't ask him for advise. And this Mboard Demo board is as close to it as i've found.

My question is anyone have any advise on how to start modify Mboard so it looks just like the one on Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou Translation? Like making is so all reposnses are on one page with only one line break in between. Or maybe does anyone know if there are any Tutorials or guides online about this kind of coding?
So I might just try coding one from scratch.

Color and page layout I can do but I've only taken one php coding class and that was over 2 years ago and the class actual centered around asp.net till the end. So I only have a asp.net text book with nothing to help with php. Total lost on how to procedded.

BobLennon

You might consider writing a small static (HTML) front end for your site that contains a forum (like PhpBB2 etc.) that supports multiple display templates.

You can do this with high level (no html/php knowledge) with a number of packages like FrontPage, Macromedia, etc..

Then you can provide a navigation on the page to link to the forum.

That will allow you to select from a number of publicly posted templates, a number of themes. You can then fine tune the display to suit your taste.

This will allow you to provide a broader view of the subject of your website, and at the same time facilitate user interaction and comments through the forum.

sneakyimp

I was confused by phpBB's template system at first but it's not all that complicated really. You just have to go in and edit all the tpl files. phpbb is complex and it's kind of a pain to determine which template file corresponds to which page or object, but all the tpl files are in HTML format and can be edited easily with dreamweaver. most importantly, they are separate from the code itself which means you are less likely to break the underlying code.

in my opinion, this is probably easier to figure out than writing your own template system. you might find this page quite helpful:

http://www.phpbb.com/kb/article.php?article_id=198&sid=ae21eddd1b235c07a8dda41bd4c1549d

StarDruid

Guess I'll just start looking threw Mboards code and experimenting. Want the message board to be part of the site like with the YKK site since both anime/mangas are similar to each other. This means a simple text forums. shouldn't take more then a few days to change it so only the topic and poster name is desplayed in the fourms index and make it so all the posts are in one page.