Common CSS Theme: MediaWiki, phpbb2, gallery2, etc...

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If this topic got your attention then hopefully you know a thing or three about CSS and the different web-apps noted in the subject title.

 

Basically I have a rather difficult task ahead of me relating to a student community web-site I've been running now for nearly 6 years. The sites theme is basically student charity fundraising but it's a bit old and tired now.

 

At present the site has:

- phpBB2 (+ various add-ons CalPro, DLManPro, LinkzPro - all using phpBB2 template system)

- Gallery2

- MediaWiki

 

... installed and loosely integrated in terms of membership using the phpBB2 admin and sessions system.. Where it really falls on its face though is the lack of consistency across the different components. I can and have done plenty of work on the backend code integrating different components so they will work together on a single login, etc... but what I'm crap at is templates, themes and not overly bright re: CSS.

 

In a nutshell I'm looking for some help, ok, a LOT of help!

 

What I'd like to do is create a single CSS theme/template set that brings all the components together under a common format, layout and is relatively easy to customise (ie: alter CSS class values once to change everything). To that end it would need to be table-less (as much as possible) and there's be a lot of time spent pulling together all the different CSS code to find commonalities.

 

If that wasn't enough I'm looking at bringing in WordPress as well and eventually upgrading phpBB to version 3. Enough variables you think? :|

 

 

Anyway, sadly the community itself don't have technical know how so I was wondering if any knowledgeable souls would like a challenge and help. Needless to say I will release the resulting work under GPL in case anyone was wondering.

 

So, any takers?

[sqdge]

Just wondering if you had looked at Joomla - it will give you a nice consistent theme, and also you can get modules that will add most, if not all, of the components that you require the site to have.

 

Although, I guess that approach will mean you lose any past data...

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Just wondering if you had looked at Joomla - it will give you a nice consistent theme, and also you can get modules that will add most, if not all, of the components that you require the site to have.

 

Although, I guess that approach will mean you lose any past data...

 

It's one idea but in fairness I'd much prefer to go with a common css as the tools like calendar, etc... are my own work and have a lot of custom functionality built in.

[Guest]

You could still use Joomla and the use the wrapper to display all your other components within Joomla, therefor keeping the layout the same. You'll just have to tweak the current components templates to blend with your chosen Joomla template.

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Just thought I'd proffer a little update.

 

I think I was being more than a little optimistic with this request as I got further into investigating the different CSS templates being used in these different tools. Couple the complexity with a lot of poor template usage (Media wiki really needs to go with Smarty or something!) has given me a lot of insight into how much bigger this is than I first thought (and I thought it was big!)

 

Re: Joomla though, that wouldn't have improved things much as you still have to figure out how to override all the CSS info that's already associated with the tools so I doubt that would be the "simple" job suggested.

 

 

As it goes though I've managed to tame MediaWiki with some careful tweaking... It is possible, just hard work.