Autonomous Industry

TweetGo to the official SMF theme site or any other unofficial site as they are all free and choose a theme that fit’s your version, I installed v1.1.11 so I must use a theme which works with this.

You have chosen the theme you want, download it and head to FTP where you will log in and head to your domains folder.

Within your domains folder you should see a folder named forum, as this is the directory I told the forum to create itself and install in to.

Within forum you should see Themes, this is where you will be putting the theme you have selected for your forum.

I chose the theme clear_mind from the SMF theme site and what you need to do now is to copy it in to your Theme folder as shown below.

Now just wait for the files/folders to copy across, this depends on the upload speed of your internet.

Head back to your forum which should be at yourdomain.com/forum and login with your created username and password, then head to Themes and Layout on the left and Manage and Install tab within that category.

At the bottom of this admin section, type in the name of the theme at the end.  As you can see the theme I have input corresponds with what I just uploaded within Themes.

Within this section you can also choose Themes that they recommend you try, but if you are uploading your own just confirm this when the pop up shows.

At the top of this section, change the Overall forum default to whichever theme you have just uploaded and installed, this will automatically change in the admin panel.

Now your forum has been installed and made to look how you want, then the final piece of this very simple puzzle is to change the logo.  Every logo for all Content Management Systems are always sat within an Images folder and then named logo or banner etc.  This needs to be found using FTP and then replaced with your own.  Below I have deleted the original logo for this theme I am using and have made a simple one of my own and then uploaded it.

I rightclicked the logo that was on the original install of the theme I chose and it has shown me the path on which it is installed.  I need to go back to FTP and head to the Themes/clear_mind/images folder and then replace logo.png

I created my new logo, which is the exact same size as the one I am replacing, with a different appearance to suit my new forum.  The old logo is highlighted in FTP and the other one below is the new one to be replacing the current one.

Once uploaded, go to the url where your previous logo was to check that the new one is now visible and as you can see below.

The screenshot below shows an installed forum using Simple Machines Forum software.  The theme and logo have been changed and if you only wanted on general category, it would be ready to start a community.