in2tech wrote:After finding this link on the phpBB.com website and reading the post for several days I am looking for help in designing my website for The Hillbilly Critic similiar to CricketMX or something similiar but I am having some problems. After reading several post here I noticed that this community looked very friendly as I hope mine does in the future. First of all I can't decide whether I want to embed the forums into my website or go for the look and feel like the site here. What are the pros and cons of each? I am leaning towards the design similiar to here as it appears that data is constantly updating on the site.
Now where do I go from here and what kinds of questions should I ask for help?
I would consider my self a newbie in the phpBB community and design although I did upload the files to my hosting site myself which is a start. After thinking about it I think I would like to have the format as the same here but with more links possibly in the future.
P.S. I am also looking for a PHP/MySql database to add to my site also if anyone knows of one? I hope I am posting in the correct area of the forums!
Forgot to add I am also working on the site at
http://www.thehillbillycritic.com through my hosting solutions built in website editor! But I don't like the fact that I have a link to the site so I want to embed it or redesign the forums to include all or most links!
Thank you so much for your help in advance,
Hi in2tech, I will go through bit by bit:
First of all I can't decide whether I want to embed the forums into my website or go for the look and feel like the site here. What are the pros and cons of each? I am leaning towards the design similar to here as it appears that data is constantly updating on the site.
By embed, do you mean by using something like an
iFrame? The problem with something like this is that iFrames are quite an old technique - they are rarely used anymore. They do have some advantages, like being able to navigate the forum while never leaving the "look and feel" of your site completely behind. But in the frame, the forum will still have a different theme/template (colours) to the your main website. I hope that makes sense.
Disadvantages - Frames look "clunky", it's hard to implement one well. It is possible to have them come out alright (I think for a simple example,
this page doesn't look too bad and that uses frames). But on the whole, with complex designs it might be tricky to have it look good - at the very least you might end up with horizontal and vertical scroll bars which is considered a bad thing.
If you want to make your website look like your forum, this isn't too difficult. Of the two, I think this is more advantageous. Advantages are; it's easy to do. Your whole site can have sessions (which means, no matter where you go on the site you stay logged in to the forum), and you can use forum content to power the homepage. I recently wrote an article about this at
http://www.phpbb.com/blog/2009/01/09/ad ... tegration/ - you might have read it already, but if not it does outline the major benefits of making your website look like your forum (or as it is called, session integration).
One drawback is of course that you will lose the design of your website as it will look like part of the forum.
I can't comment on how it looks in other browsers (Mozilla, Internet Explorer, etc) but on Safari
http://www.thehillbillycritic.com/ looks well done to me. Considering it was done with an online website editor I think you deserve a pat on the back, you have obviously put a lot of effort into the design.
There is a third option, probably this is the one I'd recommend unless you don't like your website design, and that is to "PHP-ise" your website. By that, I mean keeping your current design but adding just enough PHP in there so it is integrated with your forum and you get all the benefits of session integration (including logins, being able to display posts, etc).
So in summary, your options are:
- Embedding through frames
- Making your website look like your forum (like it is here at CricketMX.com)
- Giving your existing website extra functionality through session integration
Now where do I go from here and what kinds of questions should I ask for help?
I can walk you through any of those options once you decide which one you want to go with.
P.S. I am also looking for a PHP/MySql database to add to my site also if anyone knows of one? I hope I am posting in the correct area of the forums!
As you have already installed phpBB3, that means both PHP is installed on your website and also a database (presumably MySQL) is present. So in other words you don't have to worry about this, it's already there.
Hope this helps