Multiple categories w/ different themes in each one

[neov]

Hello.

I currently run an outdoor website with a phpBB forum. I have a number of talented posters that I'd like to give their own personal "spaces" on the site to essentially editorialize and post stories about their outdoor excursions. The end product I’m looking to create is sort of an online magazine, except the authors are able to create, edit, and post their own “articles” at their leisure.

To do this, I'm trying to create a blog that has multiple categories, each with different themes that can be linked to directly from a central page. I'd also like to be able to put a link back from each category back to the forum for discussion. Some of the things discussed on the site can be quite controversial, and I'd like to keep responses in the forum rather than the blog; essentially keep the individual categories clean with only the individual authors' posts there.

I’m fairly sure Serendipity can do this, but I’m struggling to figure out how. My php programming is not all that great (okay it’s practically non-existent), though I have learned how to do modifications to the phpBB forum, edit .tpl files to change the way a page looks, etc.

I’ve done several searches here so far, and I found something similar here:

http://www.s9y.org/forums/viewtopic.php ... rent+theme

Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough there for me to figure out how to do what I want to do. I suspect there are many plug-ins that will help in this endeavor, but I’m struggling to find them. I know there has to be a place to download the “Spartacus” plug-in, but for some reason I can’t seem to find that, or the directions on how to install a plug-in once I download it.

If anyone could help point me in the right direction, I’d appreciate it.

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

That's true, we have a plugin "Extended Options for Categories / Templates" (serendipity_event_categorytemplates) which you should be able to use for your case.

You can either download it manually from http://spartacus.s9y.org/, or use the Spartacus plugin you already mentioned. It is bundled with Serendipity 0.9 and 1.0 (you definitely should try to use Serendipity 1.0-beta3, as it contains many small helpful improvements for Smarty templating), and you can install it via the plugin configuration in your serendipity backend, it should be findable via the "Click here to install an event plugin".

HTH,
Garvin

[neov]

Thanks Garvin! I'll give that a try!