Once you’re done editing and feel confident everything works as intended and that every problem or bug has been fixed it’s time to consider releasing your template. Releasing your template is something both the phpBB project and the community benefits from and is a great way to support phpBB and give something back to the community.
This part of the guide will cover the steps required to successfully release your template as well as supporting it.
When you’ve come to the point when you feel that your template is complete, perfect in every regard, or perhaps just good enough, ask a couple of your friends and members of your family to check it out for you, post and test everything they can see. We tend to become blind to our own mistakes so it’s always a good idea to have someone else look it over and give you a second opinion. It will help you fix problems you may have ignored unknowingly.
Do this a couple of times, work iteratively, request a template check, fix the problems and request a new one. Repeat as many times as necessary. It’s time well spent since every fix discovered after release will take a lot more time fixing then than it would have should you have fixed it before you released your template. Discovering problems after release doesn’t just give people a bad impression of the template you have spent so many hours perfecting; you will also have to resubmit your template at various sites which still doesn’t guarantee that people will actually use the new version in favor of the old one.
Once you’re done testing, verifying and checking it’s time to export your style. As I explained earlier, the theme is stored in the database and contains, among other things, the colors for the moderator and administrator user links in the Who’s Online box.
When a user adds a template and its associated themes, these values are loaded from the theme_info.cfg file into their own database so unless you write these changes to your theme_info.cfg file they will not be included. This is precisely what happens when you Export a style, all the database entries associated with it will be written to the theme_info.cfg file. Should phpBB fail to write to the file you can try changing the permissions for it and setting them to 777 (chmod 777). You can also download it and save/upload it manually.
Once exporting is complete you are ready to distribute your template so that others may use it.
The first step should be to go through your template’s files and images and delete everything that isn’t needed. You may want to keep some stuff so it might be wise to have a working template copy and one you distribute. Remove all unnecessary files from the distribution copy.
You may also want to include a readme file with your template. I usually include an HTML file with basic information about the template, who made it, who the copyright belongs to and its terms of use. I also include a blank image to use as canvas to help forum owners create their own forum logo, something many people have expressed appreciation of.
Most template designers also add a small copyright and credit notice to the footer of the template. It is recommended that you put your name, copyright with year and website link after the phpBB copyright notice. This is both a service to you as well as the users of your template as they can easily find your site when they need to get an updated version of your template or require support.
When you’re done it’s time to zip your files. You should compress the whole template’s folder, the archive should contain a folder. The user should be able to extract your archive file directly in the templates/ folder.
If you are using Windows, open the archive and remove any thumbs.db files. These are used by Windows to store the thumbnails you see when viewing folders with images in Windows. The thumbs.db files take up extra space and may increase the archive file’s size by up to 80%.
It is recommended that you use ZIP compression as it is a compression format most people are familiar with. If you are using Windows you can use the Compressed Folder feature to create ZIP files however I tend to prefer third party applications.
The archive should have a name in the format templatenameYYY where YYY is your template’s version. The first version is usually 1.00 (myTemplate100.zip) but as you make minor changes such as fixing bugs and accommodating for template changes required due to changes to phpBB you need to increase the version number. Minor changes are usually affecting the second decimal (1.01, 1.02 and so on). Major changes such as adding graphics, making radical layout changes should affect the first decimal (1.10, 1.20) and so. It is important that you use a consistent and rational version numbering method as it will indicate the extent of changes between versions.
When your ZIP-file is ready you should test it. Extract it and use it at another forum, upload the files and add it in the Administration Panel (Administration Panel –> Styles Admin -> Add) and make sure everything works as intended. This is your final “pre flight” check and your last chance to make changes and fix problems.
If everything is in order all that remains is release your template on the Internet. I recommend submitting it to phpbb.com and phpbbhacks.com as these are the sites where most people go to find templates for phpBB. I also strongly recommend you make the template available for download at your own website.
So your template is finished, released and everyone seems to love it, is your work over yet?
Well that’s up to you. If you don’t feel like doing anything more then that’s okay, it’s your call but if you want to keep your template popular, and continue to support the community you should support your template. Supporting your template consists of:
With all that said I’d like to wish you the best of luck. Remember that determination and an iron will are your best friends so don't give up and keep trying. With enough effort anything's possible!
In case this guide has made you interested in how phpBB templates work from a more technical point of view, there's a great article in the phpBB Knowledge Base. You can do a lot of fun stuff with templates and by modifying phpBB, and it's not as hard as it may seem. Break the learning process into small steps and you will soon be standing on the shoulders of giants.
Should you have any questions regarding this guide or template design in general feel free to post at my forums here.