To do a forum like the one at this site, all the files we need to change are overall_header.tpl and overall_footer.tpl. Both are in templates\subSilver directory. Here are steps.
1. To change the width of the forum to 728px, which is the width of this site forum, open overall_header.tpl with a text editor like wordpad, and find the line shown below.
table width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="10" border="0" align="center"
Change width="100%" to width="728" as shown below.
table width="728" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="10" border="0" align="center"
Following shows before and after changing the width.
2. To put ads, menu, and google search at the top, we need change overall_header.tpl and add a new style sheet. Since the files are long, we do not want to post them here. You can download those files here. Compare them with the original one, you will find out what has been added.
3. To put something at the bottom of the original forum, we need to change over_footer.tpl. What we did is to put ads, a line, and copyright notice below the original forum footer. You can download changed overall_footer.tpl file here.
4. To change phpBB logo to your own, go to \templates\subSilver\images, and delete file logo_phpBB.gif. Copy your logo to this directory and change its file name to logo_phpBB.gif.
That's everything. We should see the new forum looks like following now.
