Question Help with Forums Size

Hello,

I am in the process to setting up a website. I wanted to install forums on there. I was able to download and install the Kunena forums successfully. But the layout looks a bid odd. I was wondering if someone could help me out.

The Questions are:
1. is it possible to get the Forums to be resize to be bigger?
2. Can they cover the 'Left' side of the page in joomla? I would prefer to have the shoutbox showing while surfing the forums to posting.
3. The Tabs "Recent Discussion", and others. is it possible to remove those? I am going to use the default view as the Categories.

I have attached a word document with the picture of the layout. As you can see I don't have any photoshop/dreamweaver yet. I could get access to them for a short period of time if I need to. But I would need to do what I am doing ><


Thank you for all the Help in Advance. I am going to try and schedule some time on a machine which has Dreamweaver and Photoshop so I can attempt to make changes that you guys recommend.

Another tid bit. The site is not live as of it. I can make it live if necessary.

Again, Thank you very much!

Hi Pocketss,

If you want to someone help you with forum size will be better if you have the live site. In that way we can see the problem.

Regards

G'day, Pocketss.

Here are a few general comments about your questions and concerns.

As you have discovered, you can't upload .DOC files to www.kunena.com (which is why your MS Word document wasn't included in your original posting) and so it makes it rather difficult for us to understand what you have in mind.

Knowledge of Dreamweaver, while useful in constructing web sites, is not particularly useful as far as Joomla and its extensions (like Kunena) are concerned which rely on their installation with a web-based GUI. For everything else there's Notepad (that is, you can modify the PHP source code and the CSS using a text editor).

If you're not well acquainted with Joomla I thoroughly recommend Beginning Joomla! From Novice to Professional by Dan Rahmel (Apress books).

Turning now to your specific questions (which I've slighly rephrased):

1. Is it possible to get redesign Kunena to make it look bigger? Yes. All of the CSS code is accessible. Using a tool like Firebug (see www.getfirebug.com ) will markedly improve your ability to test your changes on-the-fly!

2. Is it possible for Kunena to be positioned on the left side of the Joomla web page? I would also like to have a shoutbox showing while surfing the forums to posting. The placement of your Kunena forum (and any other extensions you use) depends entirely on what Joomla template you choose. From your description, you probably want a 2-column template. Visit www.bestofjoomla.com and other Joomla template sites to see what's available.

3. Is it possible to remove the "Recent Discussion" and others tabs? I am going to use the default view as the Categories. The Kunena default template doesn't have these tabs. The Kunena default template is being phased out (that is my understanding) in favour of default_ex template. I recommend the default_ex template but the choice is yours. There are other templates available, too.

I hope some of these general observations help.

Cheers

sozz

Thank you for your replies. I will definitely look into the book you recommended. The webiste is having techanical difficulites. haha

Thank you for the tip on Firebug, I will look into that as well. Regarding the template, I'm designing the website for a World of Warcraft Guild and would prefer to stick with this one if possible. I will link the website once it's up and running again. Until then I will try to read up and I do appreciate the info.

Thanks

Pocketss

1. Do you mean that Kunena is using only 800px or something similar? This is Joomla template issue (change template), Kunena uses all the space it can get. Or do you just want bigger fonts? Changing font size should also be easy (Sozzled answered to this already).

The website

Refering to Question 1: I would like the forums to 'runover' the left side of the page. So Menu/User Login and any other modules aren't showing. so the forums appear to be taking up more space. as they are right now, they look squashed.

Thank you for your help in advance.

I don't think the Joomla template you've chosen will achieve what you're after. Your template has three columns:

• the login, "guild classes", etc. sit in the left column
• your main content (where Kunena will go) is in the middle;
• the shoutbox is in the right column

Do you follow?

If you use two columns - the left one, say 80% of the width, where you Joomla will put your articles, forum, or whatever and the right one for everything else (login/logout, shoutbox, guild classes, etc.) then you'll be able to control things the way you'd like to ... I think.

sozzled, thank you for all your help.

I am a novice when it comes to joomla, so it took me a while to figure it out. but i had 'user login' showing in all the pages. so it would never go away. I got it to go away when i'm viewing the forums. so now it's just the forums and shoutbox. which is great. but i think the 3 column template is still getting in my way. so i'm going to fiddle with it in the late morning. since it's 4am already. haha

Could you solve this problem in the meantime?