Fair warning! This list of steps might look daunting to you, but it is literally a step by step guide on how to upload your theme. This guide is intended for people who have no idea how to upload images to their forum using filezilla or cpanel. I am therefore assuming zero knowledge.
Typically, when you find a theme you like, you will be given the option to download the theme. When you download it, you will find a zipped file. The zipped file will include all of the assets that you need to make your theme work.
- Your first task is to unzip the folder to somewhere easy to get to for you. Typically, I will just unzip to my desktop.
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When you open up the folder that you unzipped, you will see something like the following.
- The ReadMe First folder usually has any special instructions you might need for the theme! But we're going to ignore all of that, except the Upload folder. The Upload folder is the holder of all assets. This is what you need to upload, whilst preserving the path.
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If you are on icyboards:
- Go to your ACP.
- Click on icyboard settings.
- Click on enable FTP access.
- A password will be generated, it will be a random string of letters. Copy it.
- Open up filezilla client.
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You need to fill in your forum details up the top of the screen
- Host type in: icyboards.net
- In Username type: ib_youricyboardsdomain
- In Password, paste in the password you copied earlier.
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It should look like this
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Click quickconnect.
- Note: if you have bought a domain, do NOT use it. You must use the domain name that you registered your icyboards forum with.
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When you see the following text, you are good to go!
- Go back to the folder you unzipped and open it up. Now, when you open up the upload folder on your desktop (refer to the earlier screen capture) you will probably see a folder called images. Go into that and copy the name of the folder that is inside the images folder.
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Go back to filezilla. On the right hand side down the bottom, there are a list of folders like this
- The area I've drawn a circle around are all of your forum files. Right click in that area and click on Create Directory and Enter It. A dialog box will pop up asking you to name the folder. Paste in the name of the folder you just copied.
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You will be redirected to the new folder.
- Now it's time to upload! On the left hand side of filezilla there is a list of your folders on your computer under the words Local Site C:\Users\Logged-In-User\ navigate to the folder that you unzipped earlier. If you unzipped to the desktop, it's as simple as clicking on desktop, and then clicking on Unzipped Folder/Upload/images/next-folder/
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You should now see all of the image files.
- Click on the first file. Hold down shift. Click on the last file. You should have all of the files selected. Right click and click on upload. Filezilla will start transferring the files over. When it has finished, you're ready to upload the xml!
- Go to your ACP.
- Go to Templates and Style.
- Click on Import a Theme.
- Click Choose File and navigate to the folder your unzipped. There is an XML Document there. Upload that.
- Tick Ignore Version Compatibility.
- Make sure Import Stylesheet and Import Templates is ticked.
- You have successfully imported a new theme!
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If you are self hosted
- Before going to your cpanel. Extract the theme you want to upload and go into it's folder. Go into Upload. Now go into the image folder. There is likely another folder in that, with the same name as the theme you downloaded. In my case, it is focus. Yours might be different. Right click on the folder, select rename and hit ctrl/command + c.
- Now go to your cpanel (link, username and password should have been sent to you by your hosting service.)
- Click on File Manager (top left).
- Double click public_html
- Double click on images
- Click on + Folder (top left)
- Paste the name of the folder you copied earlier into the dialog box that just popped up. Then click create new folder.
- Go into the folder that you just created.
- It's empty! Time to import the images. Click on Upload. A new tab will open.
- Select all of the theme images and drag them into the new tab. They will start uploading!
- When all the bars are green, scroll down and click on Go back.
- You should now be in the folder you created through your cpanel and you should see all of your images!
- Now it's time to go to your ACP on mybb.
- Click on Templates & Styles
- Click on Import a Theme.
- Click Choose File and navigate to the folder you extracted. Just inside of it is an XML file. Upload it.
- Make sure Import Stylesheets and Import Templates are selected. Also select Ignore Version Compatibility.
- Click import theme.
- It's now ready to go! Go to your site and select it from the theme selector to check it out.
Javascript?
If your theme employs any javascript you will need to import that as well. Use exactly the same method you used with the images, taking careful note of the folders that the js file is in, and mirroring that with filezilla/cpanel.
Squares?
- If you have imported all of the images and there are little squares everywhere, it's probably using fontawesome. To add fontawesome to your theme, go to font awesome and copy the code.
- Go to your ACP and click on Templates & Styles > Templates > your theme.
- Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on Ungrouped Templates > headerinclude
- Paste the code above the stylesheets variable, so you have something like this:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://use.fontawesome.com/releases/v5.0.12/css/all.css" integrity="sha384-G0fIWCsCzJIMAVNQPfjH08cyYaUtMwjJwqiRKxxE/rx96Uroj1BtIQ6MLJuheaO9" crossorigin="anonymous"> {$stylesheets}
- Click save and returned to listing.
- Do a hard refresh on your site (ctrl or command F5) and it should be working fine!
If you have run into any other problems, please feel free to use the coding requests and help forum.
