I recently had some experience changing default prosilver template in PHPBB3. It was not as simple as I expected it to be. Well, I figured the path styles\prosilver\template\ and html file name to change, but it took me a while to understand why pages were not refreshing.

The answer was in the root folder - cache, that needed to be cleared, so that it reloads from template. I think it’s not the best approach as it should have been marked dirty instead and reloaded on the next page request. Anyway, this is how it works in PHPBB version 3.0.8, so let’s just get used to it.

Another major issue is to figure out how CSS structure works. I guess it’s probably because I am not a web developer. Anyway, here I must give a big credit to Google Chrome Developer Tools. Mostly helpful with CSS, it provides you direction as to where a change is needed. Without it, I would have spent several hours trying to comprehend the idea behind nested structure of prosilver files.

One of the changes I’ve made was to move the password box right under Board Index on the index page, so that it appears on top of any page, rather than after all forums on the main page only.

There is still a challenge to make the top right Login link function as Login button and as the current Login link depending on if username and password are entered. Basically make it the same as current Login button, just keep the link style and position. Then remove the login button, as it is sorta white crow in the whole design picture. I think the HTML form should be moved to a higher level, and that should do it, but there might be some caveats with conditional compilation of PHP (IFs and ELSEs). I will get back to this task when time allows.