This guide will guide you through the administration center. I made it as a reference to the beggining forum administrator, and may serve as a refresher for others.
Table of Contents:
Getting into your administration panel
Creating Boards
Adding Membergroups to your forum
Editing Membergroups
How to add smilies
How to change the current theme
Modifying your board's theme (in more detail)
Important IPs that you should not block
Getting into your administration panel
You can only get to the administration center if you are an administrator on your site. Don't give administration powers to anyone you don't trust, as they can easily highjack your site. Anyway, to get to it, just click admin in the navigation bar (see below).
Then, you will be asked to type in a password. Don't worry, this isn't a *secret* password, it is just the same password you use every time you log yourself into the forum. When your password is accepted, you should be at a page with a menu on the left hand side (pictured below).
Congrats! You just got into your Administration Panel!
Creating Boards
You didn't sign up to SMF For Free for nothing, did you? The first step you should take is to create some boards for your site. To do this, first go to Boards.
Then, click "Create new catagory".
Call the catagory whatever you want. If you don't want that catagory to be first, click the drop down menu (below) and change it to where you want it. Then, click OK.
Now, you should have been brought back to the main board page. Scroll down to where your catagory is (it should be empty) and click add new board.
You are now brought to a page that looks like the one below.
Now, name your board and give it a discription (if you want to). When choosing who can see the board, remember that if you don't want guests to see your board, to deselect it, and that if you do not want all membergroups to see that group, to deselect the "regular members" option. Finally, select how you want your members to use that board (normal means that all users can post polls and topics on that board, no polls means that only admin (moderators and administrators) can post poles, and that everyone else can only post topics, reply only means that admin have to create a topic, then other members can post in it, and read only means only admin can post topics and reply to those topics). Finally, decide if you want to count posts on that forum. Click OK. Congrats! You have created your first board!
Adding membergroups to your forum
There are two types of membergroups. The first are "Regular" membergroups. These can only given to a member by an administrator. The second are "Post-only" membergroups. These groups are updated whenever a member gets the number of posts required to get into that group.
To add a group to this list, first go to add membergroups.
Now, you should have a panel like this:
Type in a name for the member group. Then, decide if you want the member group to be decided by posts (Post-only membergroup) or by making a person a member of that group (regular members, usually saved for moderators/admins). You can only access the permissions by having the "This group is based off posts" check box unchecked. Then, you may decide which permisions they get by choosing amoung 3 items (restrictive is usually saved for spammers and other such members). Moderator allows a person in that membergroup to edit posts and delete posts, while maintenance makes the membergroup have Administrator permissions. Anyway, when you are done choosing permissions (if you decide for the membergroup to have any), it is time to select which boards you want them to view. When you are done, click "Add Group". You have made your first membergroup, congrats!
Editing a membergroup
In addition to creating membergroups, you can edit them as well. To start off, make sure you are in the edit membergroups section.
Then, click the "Modify" button next to the membergroup you want to modify.
You should now have a panel similar to this:
Here, you can change the name, the number of posts (if there are any) required to get into that group, the color of a user's name in that membergroup (this uses Hex Color Codes. To get a color, I would suggest Googling "Hex Color Chart".), the number of star images shown for members in that membergroup, which boards are visible to members in that membergroup, and what the star images are.
If you want to change the star images, click "Star Filenames".
This should open a new window/tab with all the stars and their filenames below them. Simply browse through the stars until you find one you like. Then, copy the filename for the star and paste it where it says star image filename.
You should now get a preview of the star. When you are done with editing the membergroup, click save. You just edited a membergroup!
How to add smilies
You cannot add smilies on server 2, unfortunately. Instead, you can replace the current smilies with ones you made. Here is a post that simply sibyl wrote describing how to do this:
How to replace smileys in SMF 1.1.2
First you need to have an understanding on how it works.
You cannot upload new smileys, nor add new smileys.
You can replace the existing smileys with smileys of your
own or smileys you have permission to use. Most smiley
artists will allow you to use them in a forum if you ask.
You will need to rename your smileys to the exact same filenames
as the existing default smileys. An easy way to find the filenames
is to go into your Admin Panel, Smileys and Message Icons.
Write down the filenames you need to use.
(or keep the window open as you work on your smileys in another window)
Collect your smileys; rename them to the same names that you earlier wrote down.
Now you need a host for your smileys.
Photobucket works very well for this.
Use your exisiting Photobucket acct, or make one if you do not have one.
Once at Photobucket make an album to place your smilies in.
If you are using your own personal webspace create a folder.
Upload the smileys into the album/folder.
Go back to your forum. Admin Panel/Smileys, and Message Icons.
(Picture below)
Click on the Smiley Sets Tab.
Click on the New Smiley Set Button.
In the Name box put the name of the album you created at Photobucket.
In the url box put the exact same name.
Check mark the Default Smiley Set box.
Click Save Changes.
go to the Settings tab. (picture below)
In the box for Base url put your photobucket address. Leave OFF the
album name. It only needs to know your address at Photobucket.
click Save Changes.
go back into settings again and this time using the dropdown box
choose the smileyset (the name of the album you created)
Back to the Menu on the Left.
Click on Current Theme
Select default smiley set for this theme : Choose your new smiley set
You can now go back to the smileys and message icons area, click on the edit smileys tab and be sure your smileys are showing up.
How to change the current theme
You can not upload a theme from the simple machines website, unfortunately. But SMF For Free gave us the Style Editor. If you want to change the look for your forum, first go to "Manage Styles".
Then, if there will be at a section like this:
Each one of those little pictures are a different style. If you like any one of them, click them. That will install the theme for you. Simply select the theme from the style picker (below) and click "Pick Forum Style". Your forum now has the style you selected added to it!
If you don't like the styles available, click Create Style to create your own.
You are now at the Create a new style page. You can edit any of the functions here, and then click Create Style when you are done. If there isn't enough functionality for you, or you want to install a style made by another member, scroll down to the bottom of the "Create a new style" page and click Create style. Now, go to and select the style you just made. Scroll down to the bottom, and you will be able to edit the CSS directly. When you are done, click Modify Style. Congrats, you have just edited the look of your board!
Modifying your board's theme (in more detail)
Here is a quote from simply sibyl on how to modify your board's style.
I have created a forum for this which you can view here so you can move around the forum and see where each color is used:
Color Guide for Manage Styles
screenshot (click to view fullsize image):
Since it is hard to see all the borders I did a close up screenshot of the area up by where the time is.
This should help you with the borders.
screenshot (click to view fullsize image):
FINDING THEM IN THE CSS
catbg, catbg2, catbg3 border bottom found here:
.catbg, .catbg2, .catbg3
{
border-bottom: solid 1px #375576;
}
.tborder can be found here:
The first number (border) is the tborder color
The second number (background-color) is the Table Border Background Color
/* This is used on tables that should just have a border around them. */
.tborder
{
padding: 1px;
border: 1px solid #696969;
background-color: #C0C15F;
}
Important IPs that you should not ban
Here are some important IPs that you should not ban (quote from Simply Sibyl):
No prob.. . here is some IP's for info... most (not all.. this is a short list) of the bots will start with these IP addresses, after awhile you'll recognize them: (Dont block them: they help to index your forum)
66.249.*.* Googlebot
74.6.*.* Yahoo! Slurp
72.30.*.* Yahoo! Slurp
65.55.*.* msnbot
207.46.*.* msnbot
65.214.*.* AskJeeves/Teoma
71.13.*.* bot.bot
204.9.*.* TurnitinBot/2.1
This was my first article. Tell me what you think! Also, tell me if there is anything else I should add, and I will try to add it! Btw, I used FlashStone Capture for my screen shots. You can get it
here!
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