For the lost...?

[Corax]

I admit, I'm one of those people who just copied and pasted things into global and main headers and footers based on the description on v.4 and then just left all that mumbo jumbo alone. Now with all these plugins and templates and whatnot I'm at a loss. And I hope/don't think I'm alone. xD

I have a very basic understanding of coding. I can code a bbc posting template or an html layout on a blank webpage on like freewebs or something. A background, position a few images, add some scrolling text boxes and whatnot. But that's about it...

Basically I've found how to download and implement plugins and templates and whatnot to my forum, but what I really can't find is the most basic question- what are plugins and templates? What do they do, and what's the difference between them? Just a really basic sort of guide thing, or links to guides that explain these things. I'd like to be able to at least know what to copy and paste where. /shot

Thanks.

[Brian]

Hi, Corax.

Plugins are like simplified header and footer codes. They work just like the old codes, except they have their own page in the admin area where you can customize their settings within visually pleasing input boxes, dialogs, dropdowns, and other form elements, similar to existing admin area pages. Plugins are also on a sortable list so you can keep track of what you have installed, and you can enable or disable a plugin with a single click of your mouse.

Templates can refer to either layout templates or themes as a whole. In V5, skins are now known as themes and have increased customization. You can choose from preset colors, you can customize the styles of just about anything using visual editor, and you can add your own CSS to the theme's style sheet (the stuff inside the <style type="text/css"> codes in V4).

Another more advanced feature of themes is the Layout Templates page, which gives you direct access to the HTML of your forum. In V4, you would have to get a Javascript code from the database that searches through the entire page looking for specific elements that meet the search criteria of the code in order to insert text into the page or change the formatting of a table or something like that. In V5, you can just go into the page and add it in yourself alongside the existing HTML. It's really awesome and definitely one of my favorite features of V5.

[Corax]

That makes a ton of sense, thank you so much. Much less scary than it looks!

[Brian]

No problem.

If you have any further questions, feel free to ask.

[Corax]

Brian I have another question. I've downloaded a few plugins and they work fine, but sometimes when I click to download a plugin it just opens a new tab with a bunch of nonsense and doesn't download anything. For example the Yootil Library which I wanted to download. Does this mean a bunch of people have faulty download links, or more likely what am I doing wrong? Thanks.

[Brian]

If it's posted as an attachment to the post, try right-clicking the download link and saving it. I think one other member had to do that workaround previously.

[Corax]

It's just a regular link as far as I can tell- here's the post if you wanna see it: support.proboards.com/thread/429360/yootil-library-updated-06-2013
When I click the link it opens a new tab with a page of random characters. When I right click and save it saves it as a .pbp.txt document so it's also just a bunch of random characters...

[CheatAreZee]

Hi Corax,

When you right-click the plugin link and then choose "Save Link As", in the pop-up window that comes up ensure that the file name just says yootil.library.pbp without the .txt at the end, and then set "Save as type" to "PBP File (.pbp)" or "All Files" and see if this helps. Otherwise you should be able to just remove the .txt extension from the file name and this should revert it to the regular .pbp file

[Corax]

Thank you. Got it all downloaded now.