Developer Note: Customizing Agora Forum - Files

This will be the first of a few posts describing methods for customizing Agora Forum, a free component for Joomla.

Before we begin, you will need to download the Agora Forum component.  After you download you and install it, let's take a look at the files that you'll need to become familiar with.

Open up the directory that Agora Forum was installed to:  /joomla/components/com_agora

Here, you'll find the two main directories that you will be working with:

/joomla/components/com_agora/style

This directory contains the style files for whichever "style" you choose for the Agora Forum component.  The style is controlled by going to the Components menu of your Joomla administration page, clicking on the Agora Forum component, and then going into the Options sub-menu.  Here you can pick any of the default styles (or select a custom one if you have one installed).

Within this directory, you will find the two main CSS files that you will be editing when customizing Agora Forum:  common.css and index.css

Aside from those 2 CSS files, there are also some more CSS files under /js_css that control the style for the all the JavaScript code files that you find under: /joomla/components/com_agora/js

The next directory to become familiar with is:

/joomla/components/com_agora/template

This directory contains all the .tpl template files that Agora uses to construct the forums.  These are the files you'll be editing when you wish to make structural changes to the forum.

Within this directory, you'll find footer.tpl, header.tpl, and userlist.tpl which control part of the look of the forum that does not consist of the actual rows of the forum table.  They are obviously concerned with the forum footer, header and the userlist.  Editing these will allow you to control the look of these areas of the forum.

The main files that I've found most useful when editing are under the directory:  /joomla/components/com_agora/template/include

Within this directory, you'll find forum_row.tpl and topic_row.tpl which control the look of each row of the forum either in the "forum view" or the "topic view".   Usually, when editing one, you'll want to make sure to edit the other so that the views remain consistent.

You'll also find index_forums.tpl, which controls the look of the actual forum header.  Editing this will allow you to control how the forum headers (ie. the forum title, etc..) appear.

Taking a look at all of the files above should allow you to begin to get an understanding of how the Agora Forum component is structured.  As always, using a tool like the Firefox Firebug extension will make a lot of this a lot easier to understand.