[Sysko]

1)Creating Forums
a)Setting up a Forum/ Creating Categories
b)Managing Permissions
c)Redirect Forums
d)Password Protected
e)Sub forums
f)Read Only Forums
2)Installing A Skin
a)CSS
b)Board Wrappers
3)Changing Your Board’s Images
a)Logo
b)Buttons
4)Creating User groups
a)Span Tags and Creating User Groups
b)Permission Masks
c)User Titles and Ranks
5)Editing Users
a)Banning and Suspending Users
b)Editing Users

NOTE: Next to each section is a path. ACP is the Admin CP and please go to each path while reading the section!</span>
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1) Creating Your Forums
It’s important to have only forums you need as you open your board. If you have 10+ forums, members might be overwhelmed and leave. Remember some necessities for every forum are:
• An Announcement Forum
• A Feedback Forum
• Staff and Elite Forum
These are mostly on every board that’s at least gotten 50 members. Always keep your topic descriptions 2-5 lines long. It looks a lot more professional.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------a) Setting Up A Forum/Creating Categories – ACP // Forum Control
Before you can even create any forums, you must create a category. This is a group of a general idea of forums. For instance, let’s say I am building a board and I want a category to put my announcements, my feedback, and my introduction forums. I wouldn’t name the category “Gaming” because it has nothing to do with that. I would most likely make it “NAME-OF-BOARD Main” because that’s more of a general name for what’s going in there. Once you have created all your categories, it’s time to create the forums! As you start to setup your forums and create them, there are a couple things you should be doing. First, make sure the name of the forum is specific. If you name a forum “Music” and you’re opening a music themed board, that won’t exactly show much. If you named it something like “Rap/Hip-Hop Music” it’s better because it points out what should go in there very specifically. Then look at the description, which should describe what that forum is mostly about. Try to keep it 2-5 lines long as that looks a lot for professional. As your naming your forums, be creative! Remember, there is no need for another Invision Free Skin Zone (IFSZ). Start out at the top, click the drop-down menu and choose what category you wish the forum to go under. Next put in to the forum title and description. Continue scrolling down through the setup and once you’re done, hit “Create This Forum”
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B) Managing Permissions – ACP // Forum Control // Permission Masks
When you created all of your forums, you may have set the permission masks. The permission masks control what user groups can see and can’t see certain forums. You can control who sees what by clicking each box to check it or uncheck it. To figure out what your editing, look at the side (find the user group you want to edit) and look up (find the option you want to edit as in “Reply” “Read” “Start” (topics) “Upload”) and pinpoint where they meet. You may be thinking, “Why wouldn’t I want someone to see all my forums?” A couple examples are these:
• If your board is a resource board (You offer Skins, Graphics, Support, etc.) you might not want guests seeing your resources without registering. If so, you would set the “Guests” permission mask so that they cannot see that specific forum.
• If you have a private forum for staff to chat in, you most-likely wouldn’t have them be able to see your forums. So you would all four boxes for guests.
Make sure you know what groups you’re editing. If you don’t, you just might make it so that the administrators can’t view anything.
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c) Redirect Forums – ACP // Forum Control // New Forum
Redirect forums aren’t nearly as complicated as they sound. A redirect forum is a forum that can take you to another forum or website. Creating one is simple. All you have to do is open up the “New Forum” page (ACP > Forum Control > New Forum). Put in all of the settings you wish to appear, and then scroll to the top-middle of the page. There should be four settings for a redirect forum. First, set “URL to redirect this forum to” to the URL of the destination of the site or forum. Then set “Target to redirect to” to either “Same Window” which is having the current open window going to the URL , or “New Window” which will popup a new window taking the person to the site or forum. Set “Switch on the URL redirect” to “Yes” only if you wish to activate it. To set it now, and activate it later, set “No”. The last option is setting the clicks to date. On the forum, it will show how many times the URL has been clicked. Setting this option is something I would leave at zero and just let the number rise as it should.
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d) Password Protected Forums – ACP // Forum Control // New Forum
A password protected forum (PPT) is a forum that only lets members with the password gets in. Anyone can see it, but when they try to enter, it prompts them for the password. This can be useful to forums with Advertisements and Reviews. The owner of that board could make the “Failed Reviews” or “Failed Advertisements” to be password protected so members can’t see who failed and who didn’t. To set one up, simply create a forum how you normally do, then find the option “Require Password Access” Put the password you desire for the forum into there and create the forum.
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e) Sub Forums – ACP // Forum Control // New Forum
A Sub Forum is just a forum that is inside another forum. This comes in handy if you are creating any sort of database. Adding sub forums helps because if you decide to add something to the database, you move it to the correct sub forum. It’s just one more way to keep your board as organized as possible. In order to create a sub forum, just create a forum how you normally would, and when your choosing it’s “Parenting Group” pick the forum you want it to go in. Not the category. Make Sure To Pick A Forum, Not A Category!
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f) Read Only Forums – ACP // Forum Control // New Forum
A read only forum speaks for itself. All it is is a forum that no one can post it. A lot of forums might use this as an archive database. That’s basically a trash can for old posts that aren’t needed anymore. A lot of times, when a board moves or switches its URL, and if it’s a resource, it might add an archive with all its old skins, graphics, etc.
To create a read only forum, simply create a forum how you normally would, but at the second option, “Forum State”, choose a “Read Only Archive” This tells the board to set the forum to read only.
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2) Installing A Skin
Before you just install any skin, you should know what you are doing. And to know what you are doing, you should probably learn some “Skinning Terms” Lets start off with two very common and simple ones. These are EFS and OSS. EFS stands for “Enhanced Fancy Skin” which is a newer type of skin. OSS stands for “Old School Skin” which is what the first type of skins were like. A lot of people prefer EFS over OSS, but skinners are starting to create more OSS skins. Another few terms you should know are “Main Title (MT)” and “Submenu” A maintitle (MT) is usually the first thing that catches your eye. That’s the piece of the skin that every category’s name is on. It’s usually the main focus of the skin. The submenu is the bar where the Members, Calendar, Search, and Help links are. That lately has been a big thing to edit and people are putting them directly under the logo. You won’t learn how to do that in this documentation, but once you get familiar with Invision Free, you could try skinning and learn how to do it. Now you know the basics of selecting a good skin for your board and all you need to do is think of one, two, or even three basic colors you’re looking for, and start searching!
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a) CSS – ACP // Skinning & Styles // Manage Style Sheets
Ok, so you have found a skin you want your board to use, and you want to install it. Although the coding is long and seems hard, it’s easier than typing! There are usually two parts to installing a skin, sometimes more, but for now we can focus on the CSS. The CSS is the largest piece of the skin. It contains all the images for the skin, and most of the colors. To install it and add it to your board, copy the entire CSS and paste it into you style sheets. Scroll to the bottom of the page and hit “Edit CSS” After that, look at your board, if it looks the same, refresh it and you should see most of the skin, if not all of it.
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B) Board Wrappers – ACP // Skinning & Styles // Board Wrappers
The board wrappers are the last piece of the skin to be installed. This is also where modifications are installed, but for that, you read where creator of the modification says to put the code. Now, the main part of this is the “Header and Body” and this is the last part of the skin. Occasionally, some skins have you add something to the “Footer” Each box is labeled, so match it and copy/paste each code into the proper ones. Click “Edit Wrapper” and your done!
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3) Changing Your Board’s Images
Changing you board images is an essential part of your board. Leaving the default images on will not really look good with many skins. About every skin comes with a button set and markers. If it doesn’t, however, it will require more work out of you. You have two choices in that kind of situation:
• You can create them yourself and add them to your board.
• You can request them at boards that allow graphics requests.
One trick that was recently discovered is if you are only missing the “Mini Buttons” (Which are the MSN, AIM, Edit, Report, Email, Profile, etc. buttons) you can type the actual word in the box. Just type “ Edit “ Make sure to add the spaces before and after each word. Otherwise, if you have the images, or you don’t and you need to know how to install images, read on.
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a) Changing Your Logo – ACP // Skinning & Styles // Images
As you scroll through this long page, you will notice there are plenty of boxes that have names next to them. Those names represent the location of the image to add. Changing the logo is just one way to edit the images. Go to the very first box. Select all the text in there and delete it. In order to add the banner you want, you need to upload it to an image host. I suggest <a href=\'http://imageshack.us\' target=\'_blank\'>http://imageshack.us</a>. All you have to do is hit “Browse” and select your file. Once your file is uploaded, find the shortest URL listed without tags. Take this code:

c

And replace the “URL OF BANNER HERE” with your URL. Finally, copy the entire finished code and add it to the logo’s box. Check the box next to it and scroll to the bottom to hit “Submit”
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B) Buttons – ACP // Skinning & Styles // Images
As I stated above:

<center>[img]URL OF IMAGE HERE[/img]</center>

Just simply host your image, add it to the code, and put it inside the box that matches up with your image. Check the box next to it and scroll to the bottom to hit “Submit”
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4) Creating User Groups
Now that your forums are created, your skin is installed, and your buttons have been uploaded, it’s time to start creating user groups. These will categorize your members and classify them as staff, members, or elite members. This is one of the most important part of creating a board as messing this up could mess the appearance of your board up. Read carefully and make sure you get everything here right!
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a) Span Tags and Creating User Groups – ACP // Users and Groups // Manage User Groups
Span tags are a very simple, half a line code. At most boards you will go to, the user groups are colored. Span tags are the codes that color the user groups, and they aren’t complicated at all! First, find a color or hex code. A hex code is a five or six digit code that can be used to change text into color. A common way to find a hex code is either by using the IFSZ's Color Chooser or by searching for a “Hex Code Generator” Once you find you hex or color, start by creating a new group. But before you do that, figure something out for yourself. What permission mask do you want your new group to be in? Members? Administrators? Maybe it doesn’t fit with any! If so, you can create a new permission mask by skipping ahead to section 4b. Once you have created your permission mask, return back here. After you have based your group off another, than you are ready to create a group! Start off by naming it. Once you have decided on a name, you must pick a group icon. If you have non uploaded, skip ahead to 4c then come back here. Next are the span tags. For the prefix, enter this:

<span style=’color:HEX OR COLOR HERE’>

And replace the bold text with your hex or color. For bolded groups, also add a and for italicized (this text) use . Then in the suffix, depeneding on what you used add these:
• If you colors your text add
• If you italicized your text, add
• If you bolded your text, add
Don’t just add one, mix and match those and play around until you get what you like.
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B) Permission Masks – ACP // Forum Control // Permission Masks
Although you already read about permission masks, this will teach you how to create a new permission mask and assign certain user groups to them. First, head the page given. Scroll to the bottom and fill out the information needed. After that’s filled out, hit “Create” Now go back to your user groups page (ACP // Users and Groups // Manager User Groups) and find the group you want to assign the permission mask. In the group’s column, and hit “Edit Group” At the second option, select the permission mask you wish to assign it too and scroll to the bottom to hit “Complete Edit” If you hadn’t already created the group for that permission mask, create a new group as said how to in 4a and assign it to the proper group. See, this isn’t as hard as you thought!
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c) User Titles and Ranks – ACP // Users and Groups // User Title/Ranks
As you finish up editing your board, this is going to be the last step! Creating your own ranks is pretty simple if you look up and down this page. For the first step, put in the name of the Rank you want to add and then how many posts you wish for people to have to acquire that rank. The last step is to pick the pip or team icon for that rank. If you have one on your computer you want to use, go the very last box and hit browse. Select what image you want and hit “Upload Pip” Keep doing this for every pip or team icon you wish to upload. Once you have all of them in, just select them for the rank and fill the rest of the rank information in. Finally, hit “Add This Rank” and your done! You are finally ready to open your board! The next bit is a little bit on how to edit members.
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5) Editing Users
Now your board is all ready to open, and you can read this if you want to know how to move members around to different user groups, change their passwords, name, suspend them, ban them, edit their signature, avatar, member title, post count, and even edit their profile info.
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a) Banning and Suspending Users – ACP // User and Groups // Find/Edit/Suspend User
In this section, you will learn how to ban users, suspend them, and even delete their accounts. To ban a user, you will go to the given page, and search for the member you want to edit. Once you find them, their IP will be displayed with them. Take their IP, head to ACP // User and Groups // Ban Settings and add it to the IP box. Hit “Update Ban Settings” and go back to the user. The user will no longer be able to even view the forum and you can now move the member into the “Banned” user group. If you haven’t created a “Banned” user group, I highly suggest creating it now. Make sure they CANNOT view the board or post at all! To move the member to a different group, go back to the given page, search for the member, and hit “Edit Member” Look for the “Member Group” drop-down menu and find the group you want to switch the member to. Scroll to the bottom when you are done and hit “Edit Member” To suspend a member, go back to the given page, and search for the designated member. Once you found the member on the results page, hit “Suspend Account” Fill out all the information asked and hit “Suspend Account” That member was just suspended.
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B) Editing Users – ACP // User and Groups // Find/Edit/Suspend User
This is the very last section of this guide so congratulations on your new board! First, we have to finish this. In order to edit any member, head to the given page and find the designated member to edit. Hit “Edit Member” and scroll through that page. Edit anything you like on that page, but make sure when you are done, you go to the bottom and hit “Edit Member” That’s it! You have basically mastered the art of creative an Invision Free Board in less than 2 hours! Open your board and start advertising! Good luck and have fun with it!
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<div align=center>Walkthrough © to Sysko. All Rights Reserved!</div>

[the_french_canadian]

Very Useful Guide!

I'm a co-admin to a forum PC Studios, and and having problems with user titles. I have set member user titles, but as i am an administrator, i would like the rank to say :Administator. I have managed to get an Administrator pip, but the text above it is from the user ranks. Any Help would be appreciated!

[ScottHughes]

That's a nice guide. However, there's random HTML code in it. Other than that, it's all good.