2 different homepages for Embeded forum?

DavidJames

Hi, I would like to embed my vanilla forum to my facebook page and to my website. On facebook, due to limited width, I need to turn off the sidebar. On my webpage, I would like the sidebar categories to show up. Is there a way that I can do this?

whu606

For the Facebook page, copy the css file and set display for the relevant element (e.g #Panel, to none). Save it as different theme, then you can use one theme for your website, and another for Facebook.

sahotataran

very best and easy - u could use css to do that???? media queries - CSS or Javascript

DavidJames

Thanks for this - I'm new to vanilla and don't know how to do that - is there a quick tutorial for doing this, or would you have some tips? Thanks

For the Facebook page, copy the css file and set display for the relevant element (e.g #Panel, to none). Save it as different theme, then you can use one theme for your website, and another for Facebook.>

whu606

Thinking about it, I'm not sure you can do it without having two copies of the Vanilla installation on your server to call up different themes.

The first would just use the Embed Friendly theme like it does atm.

Clone your current Vanilla folder on your server (copy and paste should work.) Call it, for example, fbook.

In the cloned folder open the cache folder and delete everything in it.

You should now see your forum when you point to www.yoursite.com/fbook

Go to the dashboard and with the Embed Friendly theme chosen click 'Hide the side panel' button.

Point your website to the original folder, and the Facebook page to the fbook folder.

mbschwartz

@whu606. Thanks for the suggestion. I tried this and it didn't work for me. Any changes I made to the cloned version also changed in the original version. Any other suggestions?

hbf

i run parallel installs of vanilla on the same host all the time. they both point to the same DB so the data is the same.

The caveat to using this in a prod environment is that uploads like file attachments and user avatars go into a folder called uploads which is relative to the root of each install instance, and do not get stored in the DB. This would be problematic in a concurrent production sense. I get around it by cloning the uploads folder on a regular schedule, but may not be feasible for you.

and example of having two themes running concurrently can be seen here:

http://www.homebrewforums.net/ http://www.homebrewforums.net/themetest2/

same data in the back end, the dev area is just a complete copy of the original install into a subfolder. cache files get wiped then you can log into the dashboard on the subfolder location to change themes.

Bear in mind anything that changes DB tables in one will effect the other.

whu606

@mbschwartz

You should have two different custom.css styles in two different theme folders, and give the two themes different names in the about.php files.

Then you should be able to call up whichever theme you want.

I'm not certain about embed, but it works for me with ordinary Vanilla.

whu606

hbf - If the changes are just css, not in default.master, you can use a little js code to make a css styleswitcher, if you want to give your users the choice of themes, and then you don't need 2 installs.

I used this code: http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex9/stylesheetswitcher.htm

I have it working here: http://www.whu606.com - just choose Stealth from the Quick Links panel.

mbschwartz

@hbf. This doesn't solve my problem with having 2 different lists of categories. I don't mind if the pages look identical, as long as I can have different categories on each page. As you stated, "anything that changes DB tables in one will effect the other."

@whu606. Will creating different custom css files resolve my issue of having two different category lists? I'll give it try. Just wondering if you know the answer already.

mbschwartz

@whu606 Btw, that's a very cool js code for stylesheets!

hbf

This doesn't solve my problem with having 2 different lists of categories. I don't mind if the pages look identical, as long as I can have different categories on each page. As you stated, "anything that changes DB tables in one will effect the other."

got it. i mis-read your original question. I'm not sure how to accomplish what you want easily. Seems like you are going to end up writing some hefty code to get what you want. good luck and let us know what you come up with.

hbf

@whu606 i'll check that out, most of the time i'm running the parallel installs becuase im working on plugin design, not really for basic themeing, but i like the idea of allowing users to select from theme options.

mbschwartz

Thanks @hbf. I'm don't know enough to be able to write the code. I've come up with a temporary solution which is to put all the categories on the same page, but some are hidden unless the user is logged in. It will have to do for now. Thanks for all your help, everyone! I appreciate it. http://www.freereinrunning.com/finder.html