Now that we've located the templates/ folder the next logical step is to create a folder for our new template. Start by going to the templates/ folder on your harddrive where you extracted the phpBB files. We will use subSilver and base our design on it, so start by making a copy of that folder. Once the copy process is complete, rename the new folder myTemplate.

The template files phpBB uses are located in the folder called templates/ found in the phpBB/ folder in the folder in which you extracted the phpBB zip (or .tar.gz ) file. This is the folder where the file config.php is found. On your server you may have put the files from the root folder in another folder, perhaps one called forums/.

When it comes to designs for phpBB, two terms are used the most: template and style. These are not the same even though downloadable designs for phpBB are by the phpBB Group referred to as styles.

Style

The Style is a set of template files combined with one or several Themes.

Template

A Template is a set of files; it supplies the layout and structure of a style. Imagine a house that's under construction, all you see is a skeleton, concrete pillars and open floors. A template without a style is exactly that, a skeleton.

Theme

The style is stored in the database and is what affects the visual design, the theme determines what fonts and colors are used and what background images are used for the various page elements (such as headers on boxes et c). Applied on the house metaphor above, the theme is the paint and architectural details of the building.

The phpBB template engine, that is the part of phpBB that takes the template files as input and generates the forum as you see it in your browser, loads the template files and then take the data from the database and combines these and generates HTML which it then serves to the browser. The theme is stored in the database as a series of colors and filenames. The template engine takes this information as well and serves it to the browser as CSS code which the browser then applies to the HTML the template engine has generated.

Set up a working phpBB installation

You will need to set up a working phpBB installation. I suggest you set up a new phpBB board for the sole purpose of designing and testing new templates and styles, that way you wont risk messing up your own forum. It will need its own directory on the server as well as its own database. Free phpBB hosts that do not give you FTP access will not work, you need a regular hosting account or use the method described below. Again, I wont go through this in any more detail so please refer to the documentation available at phpbb.com and elsewhere.

Apart from curiosity and patience, good things seldom come easily, you also need a few applications:

• Text and CSS editor
• FTP client

Windows

If you are running Windows I recommend SmartFTP, it is free and easy to use.