Theme Mini-Profile Question

[Kami]

I’ll be honest: as much as this question rankles me as a theme creator, the fact of the matter is editing a theme is within your rights and instructions stating you cannot aren’t really enforceable.

That said​, if you decide to modify a premade theme, PB won’t help you do so since those questions are beyond the purview of technical support & the general idea is the theme creator is best equipped to handle support on modifications of their theme, as most theme pieces tend to be intertwined and changing one aspect frequently  will have unintended consequences (particularly if the theme creator modified the templates extensively).

So TLDR, there’s nothing really stopping you as long as you’re not stealing codes and passing them off as your own (which would be against TOS), but it’s really more at your own risk and if you mess it up you’ll have to go to the theme creator for help.

[Former Member]

I understand completely. I wouldn't expect a creator to assist me if I break their creation trying to change it. I would describe what I intend to code as being more similar to the v5 default profile? Not exactly like it but in that ballpark. I'm not skilled enough to create an entire theme and I love a lot of the themes I see floating around. I just want a simpler mini-profile. But I'm not interested in paying to commission an entirely new skin instead when V6 is being promised. 

Thanks for being honest.  I didn't expect the question to be well-liked and I've debated actually asking it for a few days now.

[Michael]

Just posting to confirm the above. There is no PB rule that says you can't modify a theme to suit your own needs.

I personally think the part of the joy of ProBoards is that you can customize pretty much whatever you want to suit your own situation.

You might want to take a look and use Brian's Mini-profile creator if you're already coding things! www.proboards.com/library/plugins/item/1080

[Former Member]

Oh cooool! I'll check that out! I already got started on a mini but that might make it easier!

Thank you!

[Kami]

You’re welcome; out of curiosity have you asked the theme creator if they could edit the MP for you? A lot of the “no edits” verbiage on a theme is in reference to people taking it on themselves to make edits willy nilly and vastly changing the intent of the theme — do be prepared for the creator to say they won’t do it, but in my experience people are more willing to make some custom edits if they’re asked.

[Former Member]

I haven't yet because I haven't decided which theme to use yet. I've mostly been toying around with the mini-profile code itself. At the moment, the css is at the top of the mini-template wrapped in style tags while I decide. :S  I wanted to have an idea of what I want the mini to look like and ended up on a bit of a roll. At the moment, I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to make 2 custom fields show up as their member group color. 

[Kami]

Apr 16, 2019 12:48:27 GMT -8 @sodium said:

I haven't yet because I haven't decided which theme to use yet. I've mostly been toying around with the mini-profile code itself. At the moment, the css is at the top of the mini-template wrapped in style tags while I decide. :S  I wanted to have an idea of what I want the mini to look like and ended up on a bit of a roll. At the moment, I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to make 2 custom fields show up as their member group color. 

You may be able to get some assistance in the Templates​ board if you have general questions (template modifications aren't generally considered part of 'technical support') -- you can of course ask more specific ones there as well once you select a theme, but note that the answers might not be correct depending on the specific customisations of that theme.​​​

[Brian]

Apr 16, 2019 12:09:32 GMT -8 @sodium said:

Apr 16, 2019 12:06:21 GMT -8 Michael said:

You might want to take a look and use Brian's Mini-profile creator if you're already coding things! www.proboards.com/library/plugins/item/1080

Oh cooool!  I'll check that out! I already got started on a mini but that might make it easier!

Thank you!

I just wanted to note that my mini-profile plugin would probably make things harder than if you were just editing the template normally.

SPOILER: Click to show

Aug 23, 2015 14:39:34 GMT -8 Brian said:

Disclaimer

The purpose of this plugin is to add different mini-profiles for users to select in the Personal tab of their profile settings. This plugin should never be used as a substitute for editing the Mini-Profile layout template of your theme. The customizations you make to the Mini-Profile layout template will almost always load faster than any made using this plugin. Additionally, you'll never see the theme's default mini-profile prior to the page fully loading when you do your work through the layout templates, and load times will be drastically shortened since this plugin has to do a lot of client-side work with Javascript to get everything on the page built and replaced.

I made the plugin so that users could have a choice between a bunch of different mini-profiles instead of just the one that comes with the theme. If you're viewing ProBoards Support on a v5 theme there should be custom mini-profiles next to my posts as well as Kami's. Those are a result of the plugin.

If your goal is to have a simple mini-profile that doesn't stray too far from how the default one looks and feels I don't think I would recommend the use of the Custom Mini-Profile Creator plugin as it's pretty much the antithesis of simplicity and serves a much different purpose than that goal.