For an excellent guide to using your myfreeforum forum, you can visit howtodoit
The howtodoit "readonly" forum provides answers and walkthroughs for all common questions.
We have as most will know a lot of excess capacity on the system, and this has enabled us to in effect run the servers in a partially crippled mode, as sheer speed of the core hardware has adequately compensated.
This was done as I was reluctant to commit the servers between several alternative php caching systems. All of them having been a "choice of evils" in some regards.
But as of now I think the preferred choice has moved sufficiently away from the bleeding edge, and the systems load has increased enough to make a speed up urgent enough to want to make the leap.
So I have now enabled the speed up on all servers.
Good news really, as these cowboys have a very similar domain name to us
It is interesting and somewhat depressing to see the rise and fall of these sorts of outfits.
As I tell anyone prepared to listen, for a free forum system to be sound. It has to:
1) Have advertising that will pay LARGE bills.
2) Have the money to pay those bills in the years it takes to build an income.
3) Be run by people with the skills needed.
If anything else is going on, like it having no reasonably visible means of income, then it ain't going to stay around, or there will be a mighty sting in the tale at some point.
It is a phpbb3 look portal, and is similar to what you see here, but has been independently developed by Viper and so represents a different take on the look
I think portals were using the same cache regardless of template this would not be good when developing templates, as I have just found out I never noticed it before as I tend to ignore the use the "editor" rule
Work has started on a new look for the support forum
It will be a "list/css" based template, rather than a table driven template, and will look a lot slicker.
This will give the opportunity to add some more template switches to make this sort of template easier to do.
The results will be usable by all, and may give people some new direction in their template editing.
The index page is partially done currently, and I was almost tempted to put it on show
Another with a file extension not being displayed in a thumbnail.
The fixes this morning reflect that fact that a lot has been added to myff over the last period, and we need a phase of fixing all the little issues that have crept in.
It would try and view the arcade, but this would in fact not work, as the cookies that have your login information are not stored against the "www" domain.
To remove this sort of anomaly, www addresses are now always redirected back to where they should really go.
Make your forum load faster and prepare for the new wysiwyg
This tip will also make editing templates more straight forward.
With most templates there is two sets of style sheet information, the style sheet information controls how the forum looks, and so having much the same and often contradictory infromation in two places is confusing
The first place you will find the information is in overall_header.tpl, withing <style></style> tags. Within these tags you will see many template macros. e.g. there are lines like:
Code:
</p><p>a.nav { text-decoration: none; color : {T_BODY_LINK}; }</p><p>
Where {T_BODY_LINK} comes from values edited into themes management in the admin panel.
This allows you to control some of the look of the template direct from the admin panel. But there is a problem, well a few really.
1) The CSS gets loaded each time, slowing page load times.
2) The css file itself may also be being loaded, conflcting with the defintions in overall_header.tpl.
3) Last but not least the new wysiwyg editor will not know about the page styles, as it needs a css file.
To resolve this is not hard, but you do need to do a few steps properly.
Firsly view the page source in the browser, and copy the CSS definitions which are between <style> and </style> do not copy <style> or </style> you want what is between the tags.
Next in the template editor replace the contents of the css file (e.g. for myff_forum1 it would be myff_forum1.css) with the copied definitions.
Now go through the defintions and add "/" in from of "templates/" so it becomes "/templates/" this is needed or images will not be found.
Next edit overall_header.tpl and remove all the text between <style> and </style> including the <style></style> tags.
How to get the best response out of the support forum
Everyone posting on here gets support, and we are proud of how good that support is.
But some people get their questions resolved a lot quicker than others.
So here is how they do it.
1. They follow the posting check list, not just on the first post in a thread, but within the thread itself. If each (well perhaps not quite each) post on a thread posts links and recaps where things are with the issue, then someone can understand what needs to be answered without rereading perhaps several pages.
2. They don't develop a reputation as a time waster. Some things may be hard to search for, other things are very easy to find with just a little effort.
3. They demonstrate a willingness to actually make the effort to learn in proportion to the complexity of things they want to do. If you really do want to make dozens of html edits you should learn at least the basics of html.
4. They have a forum worth supporting. A forum is about posts and members, if your priority is not the forum contents, but template editing then your forum is doomed. So why should people want to spend time supporting a doomed forum?
5. They are polite and appreciate help given.
6. They post in clear English without TXT speak or silly colours or fonts. Little is more annoying than someone wasting time on fonts and colours that generally make their post less readable, and no time proof reading what they have posted to see if it actually makes sense!
7. Last but not least, having learned themselves, they try and help others on the forum to give back to the community.
Last edited by on Sun Apr 05, 2009 7:55 pm; edited 2 times in total
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this would not be good when developing templates, as I have just found out 
I never noticed it before as I tend to ignore the use the "editor" rule