The current economic climate has made free software even more popular that it was before especially forum software.  vBulletin, probably the best paid forum software has recently increased its license fee for both new license and renewal which made using a free forum software more appealing than ever. I need to add a forum to one of my site, not keen about dolling out $160 to acquire one more vBulletin license to the 6 I already have I went shopping for free forum software.

I have use phpBB before but painful lesson of the past from running a forum with phpBB made me discard the idea outright, phpBB is probably more secure now but I decided to give SMF a try. The thing with using new software is that you become a complete novice again.

For people who may want to change SMF template from the default to something more uplifing, I hope you find this blog useful, here is how to change SMF theme:

1. To install a theme, you should go to the forum admin area and click on “Themes and Layout” in the “Configuration” section.

2. To install a new theme just click on the “Browse…” button to navigate to where the theme is stored on your local computer, and click “Install“. Once it’s installed you’ll see a confirmation page.

Another way is just to extract the theme’s .zip file on your local hard drive and to upload the files via FTP to the “themes” folder. To apply the new theme, go to “Themes and Layout“, change the theme from the drop down menu in front of “Overall forum default:” to the new theme and then click the “Save” button.

You can find more useful tips on how to start a forum, install a forum software, configure and modify a found at UK Webmaster forums general discussion or web design section. Its free to register.