• Registered: 2006-10-18
  • Posts: 5

Topic: the basics...

Can someone explain something very basic for me?  I've been looking at these files for a few days now...my forum is up and working and all is well there but I am trying to customize it... and here's where my brain shuts off. . . or maybe I haven't learned this before . . .

So my board is at whatever.com/forum  -- so I assume that it's really whatever.com/forum/index.php .... and I can see when I view source on that page on the actual internet that there is a whole slew of html and its calling the oxygen.css stylesheet and everything has all come together nicely. 

But when I am actually looking in Dreamweaver at my local files... what is the base file that is calling all that code on it????  I have looked through every file in the punbb folders and I just cannot make heads or tails of what page is calling that index.php script and what page that code is on calling for the oxygen.css stylesheet....

I've done a sitewide search for any page that references oxygen.css so I can figure this out but it says "no documents found"... I see that there are several index.html pages in several different folders that have just header tags and body tags... I see the header.php but no mention of oxygen.css.  I just don't get it and rather than spend another 10 days trying to get it I figured I mightaswell just suck it up and ask someone lol.

2 Reply by Mark

  • Mark
  • PunBB Donor
  • Offline
  • From: England, North West
  • Registered: 2004-09-21
  • Posts: 834

Re: the basics...

check out http://www.PunRes.org

lots of ods and styles there that you should be able to understand smile

Mark's Website

3 Reply by Paul

  • Paul
  • Senior Member
  • Offline
  • From: Wales, UK.
  • Registered: 2003-08-13
  • Posts: 3,089

Re: the basics...

The main pages that make up PunBB are created with the files index.php, viewforum.php, viewtopic.php, search.php, profile.php etc according to which page you are viewing. Those files include other files such as header.php and footer.php. All the generated content is then merged with main.tpl to produce a page. To work out what is happening on each page just follow the chain of includes.

You won't find a reference to Oxygen.css becuase that would mean that Oxygen was hardcoded as a default style. The name of a users selected stylesheet is stored in the database and is obtained by header.php which then generates the appropriate link to the stylesheet for output.

4 Reply by krissydb (edited by krissydb 2006-10-18 13:44)

  • Registered: 2006-10-18
  • Posts: 5

Re: the basics...

Well I thought so about the header.php calling the stylesheet....how does it know to call oxygen.css??? I looked all through that header.php file to see any reference but I don't see any to that specific stylesheet in that php code and there's several different stylesheets...

Wow is this whole php/stylesheet formatting is crazy complicated or are there some sort of tools I should be using that I'm  not?  Does everyone who uses these things know how to code php?

  • From: Leuven, Belgium
  • Registered: 2005-06-14
  • Posts: 2,653

Re: the basics...

Line 65 in header.php loads the user-selected stylesheet.

  • Registered: 2006-10-18
  • Posts: 5

Re: the basics...

OK...I see that line.  But what if I wanted it to call a stylesheet called whatever.css   ???

  • Registered: 2006-10-18
  • Posts: 5

Re: the basics...

Where did the "user" "select" that stylesheet?  tongue

8 Reply by Paul

  • Paul
  • Senior Member
  • Offline
  • From: Wales, UK.
  • Registered: 2003-08-13
  • Posts: 3,089

Re: the basics...

The user selected the stylesheet in their profile. The administratror selected a default stylesheet in the admin control panel admin/options.

  • Registered: 2006-10-18
  • Posts: 5

Re: the basics...

Ohhhh ok.  let me check that out...I didn't dig far enough on that admin page!

Thanks for the help!