Using coppermine theme for my website

[crash77]

I'm completly new to any kind of website setup so I've been pleasently surprised at how easy it's been to install, configure and customise Coppermine 1.4.8 so far, thanks for the great app and documentation!

Now that I've got coppermine up and running I started to wonder if it was possible to use the theme to expand my website into more than just a gallery.  I realised this is undoubtly a very basic question but as I have no knowledge of php (and limited HTML) I've no idea where to start.  Once someone can point me in the right direction I'm sure I'll figure it out as I did with removing buttons etc etc.

What I really want to do is have my index.php load a page identical to the gallery theme but without any of the gallery related buttons or categories etc, just my own content butons and pages like "About me", "My travels", and various other non-gallery related stuff.  Then somewhere in the menu a gallery button which puts the visitor into the gallery seamlessly.

I'm sure this is possible I just want to know what would have to go in the index.php etc.

I'm good at looking at something already setup and figuring out (stealing!) what I need to do so if you have any examples of this I would appreciate it.

Thanks!

Crash77

P.S. I'm using the fruity theme if it makes a difference

[Sami]

you can simply go to gallery index and save it with your browser save as feature
Then change the content

[crash77]

Ok that was very easy, guess I should have thought of that!  So there's no issues with copyright or anything like that by using this method?  Do I still need the Powered by Coppermine on my non-gallery pages?

Thanks!

[Sami]

Coppermine comes with GNU GPL licence and the themes are part of coppermine
as long as you use gallery's theme I think you should have it there

[Joachim Müller]

http://forum.coppermine-gallery.net/index.php?topic=34209.msg160074#msg160074 e.a.

[crash77]

Thanks again guys, appreciate the help.

Now that I've had a play around with this I need to ask another question.  As my newly saved page using the coppermine theme doesn't opperate like a conventional set of html frames, what's the best way for me to get the numerous pages I want to display showing "within" the theme?  For example on one of my trips I kept a blog which I've since downloaded and now want to intergrate into the site.  If I were working with frames I would simply specify the frame to open any one of the 300+ html files in and maintain the theme around them (green and orange at left and top).  Any ideas?

Sorry if this is going slightly off topic but you guys seem to know alot so I was hoping you could help.

Regards,
Crash77

[Sami]

This need to recreating that theme with frame and it's not related to coppermine
- as an option you can use iframe in this way you can keep your theme

[Joachim Müller]

Using frames is not recommended at all, as it has severe drawbacks that are not coppermine-specific, but inherent to their design. If you decide to use your custom page to display the content from your blog (or any other page), just define a frame or iframe. However, this method won't give your blog the look and layout of your coppermine theme.
The only real solution is to create a custom theme for your blog that matches the look of your coppermine theme (or vice versa). After this has been accomplished, add a link pointing to the Blog into your coppermine navigation and vice versa - this will make them look seamlessly.
This requires of course some work (and some CSS skills). If this is too much asked, then try it the other way round: choose a pre-made theme for your blog and then create a coppermine theme that matches the look of your blog.
If you decide to go for a framed solution for now, just look up the iframe syntax and add it to your custom page. It will of course not look very good (as suggested above).

[Gizmo]

My I suggest taking a look at the WordPress theme - Connections that I uploaded to Coppermine only yesterday. Check it out here: http://forum.coppermine-gallery.net/index.php?topic=34783.0 and you can check out WordPress here: http://wordpress.org/. As you can see, you can have a blog and CPG with the same theme. There are hundreds of themes for Wordpress but some aren't suitable due to the narrow main context table but I'm sure you'll get plenty of ideas whether you're using WordPress or some other blogging software.

[crash77]

Hi Gizmo,

Thanks for the link to your theme, it's great!  I'm not too bothered about using wordpress to be honest but I'll certainly use your theme instead of fruity now!

Just one question, is it possible (easy) to adjust the theme so it's wider overall?  I want to run my thumbnails and intermediate images a little bigger than default but don't like the scroll bar.

Thanks
Crash

[Gizmo]

Hi Crash,

There's no reason that you can't expand it BUT you'll have to make a new header image and if you take a look at it, you'll have to incorporate the edges around this image to make it look consistant. I may revamp this header to make it easier for people to add a different image but it will have to wait till I'm finished with other projects. The css properties that will need to be expanded are #rap, #main, #content and #header. Once this is done, there may be some other tweaking that needs to be done if things get out of alignment. Take a look at the template.html and css.style to get an idea of how's it laid out and make some changes to see how it looks.

I guess I should add that this theme was designed to fit in an 800 pixel wide browser window with the sidebar menu. If you increase the theme's width then people viewing your site will have to use the scroll bar anyway but I think the percentage of people still using 800x600 monitors are rapidly decreasing (at least I hope so). Make sure it will at least fit within a 1024 wide browser window and you should be good to go.

[crash77]

Hi Gizmo,

Thanks for the advice, I've just got the theme looking the way I want it for 1024x768.  Not too worried about how it will look under 800x600 because as you say I don't think there any many people out there that use it anyway.

I simply increased the width values of #rap, #main, #content and #header by 200 and it looks great.  I obviously had to modify top.jpg and rap.jpg, again increasing the width by 200 pixels.  I intend to use a different graphic inside top.jpg anyway but I just extended the original so I could see what it looked like.  I'll post both images so you can have a quick look if you like.

While I was in the style.css file I modified the #content padding to 9px, just to line it up at the top with the sidebar window.

Sorry to ask another question but do you know how I'd go about moving the Powered by Coppermine and the 4 graphic icon's (php, mysql etc) to under the footer line you entered regarding theme design and porting?

Crash

[Gizmo]

Glad to see you've made your way with the theme. There's a one question rule per post so please respect this in the future.

Now, as for the "Powered by Coppermine" link, sorry that's a trade secret and the Devs don't want it moved. It's a small request that should be honored for all the work that they have put in on the great "free" product so I won't go any further. Read the documentation and search the forum to understand this better.

For the

4 graphic icon's (php, mysql etc)

that you are talking about, these are the {VANITY} tag that you can find in the template.html. Move it to where you want them to show up but if you prefer to not see them, you can turn this tag off in Config => Themes settings => Show the vanity block on themes that are defined as XHTML and CSS compliant => No (this is the preferred method).