Anirudh Lohia|Me and My Theories

Smilies do add a lot of fun in forums postings. Lot of smilies has been created ever after it was first used. But we only get a few of them when we first install PhpBB forums. Here is the process that will help you to install a lot of smilies in your forums.

• Download the smiley pack that you have selected and decompress it.
• Put all the smilies that you have just downloaded at this location on your server /phpBB2/images/smiles/. Also if there is a file with .pak extension include it in the directory with your new smilies.
• Once you are done with this, move to your forums administrator panel and click on Smilies under General Admin. Here you will surely see original smilies with their codes.
• Its very important that you save the base configuration in a .pak file, so that even if something goes wrong you can revert back to base configuration. For this you need to click on “Create Smiley Pack” and then download it when PhpBB offers you a choice.
• Now go back to the smiley administrative panel and click on “Import Smiley Pack”.
• Now choose the .pak file that you want to install, check the option that will erase older smilies (remember you have already save the base configuration). And in case of conflict also click on the option that will replace existing smilies.
• Finish by clicking on Import Smilies. That’s it you are done.

Above process is useful when you want to install a whole new pack of smilies, but what if you only want to add one or two new smilies. PhpBB give you an option for this also.

• Add the image that you want to be used as smiley in your server at /phpBB2/images/smiles/.
• Go to Smilies Administrative Panel and click on “Add a New Smiley” button.
• Choose the image that you have added in your server for the second field, you will see a preview of the same there.
• For the first field enter the code that you want to use for that smiley.
• And in the third field enter the emotion that the smiley represents. And then Click on Submit.
• Repeat this steps for all the smilies that you want to add.

This is so exciting, I have added a lot of smilies in my forums.