Sometimes board administrators of phpBB3 forum like to edit their forum template to change the appearance and functionality of their forum. Few common reasons are,

1. Adding a sidebar to place advertisements and / or important menu items inside it.
2. Adding Adsense or other ad code after each post of their forum.
3. Changing the entire forum template including menu, logo, background, and font etc. to match with the other parts of the website.

Fortunately phpBB3 forum has a very rich and user friendly interface to edit your forum template from within your admin panel. From your control panel you can,

1. Edit your template Style Sheet to change background, font, links, text box and the appearance of other input elements to change the overall appearance of your forum.
2. You can use different image set from another template to make your template unique.
3. By editing template files you can add left or right sidebar to your template.
4. You can insert your site logo at the top of the forum.
5. You can add Adsense or other ad code at any place of your forum template.
6. And finally you can generate a new template by cloning an existing one.


Advantages and disadvantages of editing template

The benefits you can get from editing your forum template are,

1. You can insert custom links, such as links of important forum posts, link of other Web pages of your site or even links of other websites. If you do so then there will be higher chances that users click on those links when browsing your forum.
2. You can earn revenue from the advertisements you place on your forum.
3. Change of style will change the appearance of your forum which actually uniquely shows the identity of your website. It is important because most of the forum administrators use few common templates available free on the Internet and any uncommon appearance will help to keep your forum in viewers mind.
4. The only disadvantage is that viewers are more familiar with...

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Website bulletin board software today is used by just about every industry and type of organization in existence. With bulletin board software, websites can increase the level of user interaction and participation with each other. This results in the building of strong social ties and online communities. The online gaming industry in particular has been very successful at implementing bulletin board systems to increase user activity and to turn website visitors into paying customers. For gamblers looking to play online slots for real money they may end up on the website www.onlinepokiesgames.com. This kind of site is perfect for adding a user forum with the option to join in the conversation with other players of the site. While this example is specific to the gaming industry it will also work for other types of e-commerce as well. The best news is that if you want to install online bulletin board software on your website it won't cost you a dime. This is because the vast majority of forum software solutions are open source. The most popular choice by far is phpBB which only takes a few minutes to install and set up. Once phpBB is on your website all that is left to do is create a few categories and wait for your user community to start interacting with each other. Google also loves forum posts as they are unique and fresh content on your site which can be valuable when considering a website strategy.

Another way to have great conversations between people about their favorite online pastime is to allow comments to blog posts. Click here to see an example of a gambling news section with comments allowed by users.