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Icon Sets

The ‘icon sets’ refer to all of the buttons and graphical links within Simple:Press Forum. You can change your icon set by navigating to Forum ☛ Options ☛ Style Options where any sets that you have downloaded will be shown in the select list.

There are two types of icon sets – textual and non-textual. These are explained below. A lot of user forums we visit have not turned off the icon labels when using textual icons which leads to label duplication and a cluttered display.

Non-textural Icons

Non-textural icons are just that, simply a graphic with no text as shown in the illustration. The text component is supplied as a label beside the icon and both form a link to the desired action.

The Simple:Press Forum icon set ‘default’ is a non-textural icon set.
Many of the labels can be optionally turned off but this would normally be something you would do with a Textural Icon Set.

Textural Icons

Textural icons are a complete button style icon which includes the text. Many of the icon sets available with Simple:Press Forum are of this type. Not ALL icons in the set are a button but many of them are.

If you select to use (or to make) a textural ikcon set you will want to turn off the display of the label for those icons that contain text.

If you go to Forum ☛ Options ☛ Style Options (illustrated) you can do just that. Simply check the boxes of those icons where the label should not be displayed.

Under the Icon Selection control is a checkbox labelled “Update Icons to Default Settings for this Skin if Template Exists?”.

All icon sets supplied by Simple:Press Forum will have this template. By checking this box and updating the form, the labels that need to be turned off for the selected icon set will be automatically done for you.

This might not be the case with sets supplied by other users.

Creating A Custom Icon Set

Like skins, the first rule of working with icon sets is NOT to make changes to a set that is supplied. This may lead to loss of your changes during a future update to the plugin – although use of the forums Storage Locations will offset this possibility.

If you want to create a new set:

Create a new folder in the forum styles/icons/ folder with a unique name of the set you want to create.

Copy the set of image files and folders you wish to change or use as a base for a new set into your new folder.

Change the icons you wish to replace.

The only rule is that all replaced icons MUST have the same name as the original and MUST be a .png image file.

Please note that the master ‘blanks’ for all our button icons are available for download on our Simple:Press Forum Resources Page.

Have You Created An Icon Set

If you have created a new icon set and would be willing to share it with others please consider sending it to us so that we may add it to our library and offer it for download. All contributions are welcome and appreciated. This includes a foreign language translation of an existing set.


Article written by steve on January 23, 2010 and last modified by Yellow Swordfish on February 25, 2010