Its no secret that I am always modding up clan themes for a totally custom approach.  Lately I have been diving off into the task of learning some CSS (cascading style sheets).  Learning new things is like an addiction for me.  Doesn't really matter to me how I do it or what its about, but I have to feed the brain some info.  I use the internet, books, blogs, forums, and just good experience as my sources.  I wouldn't say I have a lot of free time on my hands, but I spend the time I do have trying to learn something new.

Anyway back on subject.  I revamped the news page using just CSS styles.  No Images, just style classes.  Of course CSS can use images.  One of the biggest bonuses of using CSS is the ability to reuse styles all over your site without having to retype the actual syntax each time. 

This is an example of my code in modules/News/index.php calling for the style newslinks

echo "<div class='newslink'><strong><a href="mypage.html" title="$title">$title</a></strong>(".$reads." Reads$thoughts)</div>";

This is an example of my code in the phpnuke theme's style.css

div.newslink {
    padding: 3px;
    margin: 2px;
    background-color: #a9b6bc;
    color: #000000;
    TEXT-ALIGN: left;
    font: 8pt verdana, geneva, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
    BORDER-TOP: #222222 1px solid;
   BORDER-BOTTOM: #222222 1px solid;
   BORDER-LEFT: #222222 1px solid;
   BORDER-RIGHT: #222222 1px solid;
}

Clan Themes Latest News Page

I didn't only do it for the CSS practice, but also to help new users get caught up on whats going on.  Its shows the latest 10 articles from each topic, number of reads, and comments if any.  Also I incorporated the CT Search It Engine.

I also revamped the phpnuke comment system.  I want it to be as easy as possible for the users to participate and add their thoughts to the articles.  At the end of the day it has to be all about the users.  Just that simple.