Question Disappointed with Kunena 1.6 template set up.

Hi,

First I should say thank you to everyone who is involved with the development of this software. It is Joomla's best forum extension and congrats on all your hard work.

I am a little disappointed with the template system in Kunena 1.6, it appears that improvements have been made in terms of making it customizable to an extent, expecially for people who have no solid skills with CSS, but for people who are efficient with CSS and graphics, this template feature is a step back. I know there are some benefits such as load time when using CSS sprites for the buttons in this new template but this small benefit is cancelled out due to the fact that now the buttons cannot be changed. ALL Kunena forums will now look pretty much the same due to this and it makes creating a unique style for different websites very very difficult.

I can't understand why this change to make the buttons text with a background image rather that an actual image. When the buttons are images as in Kunena 1.5 and propably EVERY other forum software out there, simply replacing these files can make a HUGE difference to how the forum looks.

I hope I am wrong here and there is a way but I have searched every php file in Kunena and I can't for the life of me find where the code is that tells these buttons to display as text... if I could find it I would change it but I've looked everywhere....

Anyobdy have any ideas? Your help is greatly appreciated as this will be a factor in using Kunena going forward due to it's template restrictions...

PLEASE and thank you in advance..

Actually they are really easy to change into indvidual files, if you don't want to use sprites. CSS images are much more flexible, as you can use whatever filenames, css sprites or whatever you want to only with one line change inside CSS file.

We are never going back to old image tags as there is no point of doing it. But I think we should make the sprites easier to use for those, who don't know where to start. We had plans of doing that earlier, but as only very few people complained about it, there seemed to be no need to keep it as high priority.

And the benefit of having CSS sprites is easily 1-2 seconds faster page loads -- which is really good benefit.

We could move the buttons to be css3 based, with very minimal images, page render has improved across the board for me, my background image is what takes the longest too load now, heh.

If you're a user that's comfortable writing your own CSS, you can also just create your own Kunena template instead of modifying the default one. Just duplicate the default template folder, change the name, and hack away. Or you can start from scratch, strip away anything you don't want/need, or you can totally change anything you want to the output you prefer.

Our goal with templates is to try and make them as flexible as possible, but this means different things to different users. We want to provide options for people that don't know anything about CSS (which is a lot) and not get in the way of those technically skilled people that want to customize things in much more detail. If you have specific suggestions for improving templates, feel free to post them here.

Hello Severdia,

Thanks for the reply. I think what the initial discussion is implying is that there is little flexibility in how we can apply design. The sprites give pros and cons, but from a design perspective it is difficult to change because we are required to either use what is already given to us or find a way to change it ourselves. One thing I came across was that I had to find specific files to disable certain color schemes within Kunena files instead of an ability to just turn them off. Convenience is a big center of the discussion for the rest of this post.

My issue has been centered around the use of Kunena templates in general, and being required to use a template and all its associated parts in a specified directory. From a design perspective, especially in consideration of template distribution, this can be difficult. If I was going to use only Kunena for Joomla, then I can see the benefit of using Kunena's current template manager. However, now imagine I have 3-4 components that all use their own template manager, then I have a problem. In experience I have always been able to provide a template in a different location, or be able to override, but not necessarily with multiple views. Joomla! 1.6 solved this problem, I believe, so maybe we will see an improvement. My ultimate perspective here is to centralize template distribution for template designers without having to jump across extra hurdles for the multiple installations that distributors will most likely require their users to perform.

Is it possible to do this already? Yes I have heard it being done. More experienced Template developers have most likely worked around this issue. However I have not seen it in my research here and across the web, which makes me believe it is too difficult to put into practice to be worth the time, especially since I am not as an experienced designer. Again convenience is a great part of my concern here, and if implemented more clearly this will allow the flexibility in how we can and should set up the structure of our Joomla! websites.

It sounds like you're really having a problem with the way the Joomla eco-system rather than specifically Kunena. Yes, if the Joomla Template Manager was more robust (it's much better in 1.6 than in 1.5), third-party components could leverage that for their template systems—and they'd all be unified.

I consider myself to be in the category of "more experienced template developers" and I don't think there's a solution to what you want (at least not one that's reliable and in common use). Kunena 2.0 will be MVC and users will be able to customize it without a template if they want. But I think that the heart of the issue you're explaining is the fact Joomla extensions are not as integrated into Joomla itself (and integrated with each other). Drupal does a much better job at this than Joomla and it's not a problem specific to forums or templates. Our philosophy has been to try and get Kunena to integrate with (or at least play nicely with) as many other extensions possible. Unfortunately, most Joomla extension developers only fix bugs when they conflict with another extension, not take a pro-active stance to find/leverage integration points.

Again, if you have other ways to improve the template system in Kunena, feel free to post. We should be releasing a test version of Kunena 2.0 shortly and that will give folks a sneak peek in the early stage in the even they want to give feedback or contribute something.