H2O: Forumlist options

There are 3 forumlist display options in H2O.

Forumlist options

Option Name	Output
List Traditional forumlist
Popularity Bars List with 'topics' 'last post' column removed. See below for explainer.
Grid Forum tiles with an assigned icon or background image

Changing the forumlist display

Open the H2O theme settings
Find "Forumlist Display"
Set as required
Submit

Assigning images to grid tiles

You can assign an icon or image background to a grid tile by using phpBB's native "forum image" feature.

Using a file manager, upload the image(s) you want to use to the following location: yourforum.com/images/grid/
(You will probably need to create the new folder called "grid")
Navigate to: ACP (Admin Control Panel) → "Forums" (tab)
In the left sidebar, click "Manage forums"
Next to the forum you want to add the image to, click the green "Settings" icon
In the "Forum image" field, type the full path to the image you want to use.

The path is relative to your phpBB installation, so you don't need to include the domain name in the image path. For example: If your image is located in

yourforum.com/images/grid/forum_1_background.jpg , you only need to enter: images/grid/forum_1_background.jpg

Popularity bars explained

Popularity bars are a unique feature we're trialling in the H2O forumlist:

The algorithm is simple. H2O will automatically identify the forum with the highest number of posts on your site; it then stores this as the the highest post count value.

Then for each forum row, its own post count is stored as the current post count value.

The 2 values are combined to create a percentage, which loosely represents each forum's popularity relative to the most popular section on your site.

For example: Imagine the most popular forum on your site has 10,000 posts. Then consider another forum has 5,000 posts. The popularity bar for the forum with 10,000 posts will be at 100%, as it has the highest post count. The popularity bar for the forum with 5,000 posts will be at 50%, as 5000 is 50% of 10,000.

This is an experimental feature and might not be continued in future versions.

Popularity bar translations

The popularity feature uses non-standard language strings, therefore if you're using a non-English language pack, the translation needs to be set in the H2O theme settings extension.

These options are called:

Popularity Label Text
Popularity Bar Tooltip Text