Installing new Simple Machines SMF Forum template Tutorial

SMF Forum has a template system that can let you style of change your forum look and feel easily, if you are not a computer graphics person or you are not familiar with web designing, there are some freely available SMF forum templates for you board to choose from, these free templates are contributed by the SMF members and generally released under GPL license.

Installing SMF templates

Installing the template is a fairly easy task, all you need to is :-

1. Download the desired SMF from template from the official simple machines forum site, or other template selling sites
2. Extract the compressed template file, it will be extracted to a folder i.e. new_template_name
3. Upload the entire folder to your hosting account and place it in the Themes folder in your SMF program folder,
   i.e. /home/username/public_html/forums/Themes/new_template_name
4. Login to your SMF administration screen, and click into Theme and Layout Settings
5. In the Install a new theme option, enter the FULL path to your new template folder, i.e. /home/username/public_html/forums/Themes/new_template_name, click Install to have the system registered the new theme as default theme to your forum board
6. Done

NOTE: Some template may have left out the help files in it's new template distribution, all you need is copy them from the default template folder and place it in the new template folder.