many ways this can be done…

In this case, we have hooked into the sp hook ‘sph_AfterDisplayStart’ in order to display a message… so in the functions.php file of our wp theme, we tied into that hook and output the message.

But that was because as we launched and tried to output that message, we found a bug in the sp code.  We wanted to output that code by simply writing the text on the wp page the forum appears on.  That is really the easiest way to do it.  But we had a bug that was preventing the text on the wp page from showing up, so we went the hook route.  The bug has since been fixed and the code committed to 5.0…

Another way you could do it would be to simply put in in your them spHead.php file…

And there are multiple other sp hooks that could be used besides the one we did use to do very similar… notice the hook we used is after display start… that means after the main forum container has been output…  you could do ‘sph_BeforeDisplayStart’ to output before the sp main container…  Or for the end of display, there is ‘sph_BeforeDisplayEnd’ and ‘sph_AfterDisplayEnd’.

These hooks (meaning all the new ones in 5.0) are incredibly powerful and allow you to customize wildly (just ask Lee)…  Of course, we need to get started on our documentation of all these hooks so you dont have to search for them…  With the alpha winding down, that process will begin.  And yes, we will be looking for volunteers to help (did you hear that Lee?).

Thanks for the quick reply and pointers on hooks.  I’m familiar with the concept from building/tweaking Genesis themes, where they are used a lot. 

I’d consider adding this as an SPF setting.  After all, you have a group special message.  I think it’s a common need, and something people aren’t going to want to edit PHP to do. It would be neat to have the message include the option of a start and end date, which would support maintenance announcements, vacations, special offers, etc.

I must have the fix for text on a WP page displaying, because that works for me, but that’s harder to style since that text is outside of the spMainContainer div.

On an unrelated note, I had to type this 2x, because of strangeness using the editor.  I added a sentence to the end of a paragraph before the end of my forum post and then scrolled down, which caused my cursor to disappear.  Trying to figure out where I was, I hit the backspace, and lost my post.  I sort of recall this happening in earlier versions of SPF.

the editor jumping around appeared to be fixed with the latest version of tinymce, but perhaps not… Its been a bothersome one and I will reopen the ticket…