it depends what you mean by custom icons. SP refers to ‘custom icons’ as replacements for the default icon that appears beside forum Groups and Forums in the listings (Group View and Forum View). Such as we use here. If that is what you mean then got toi the forum admin > Forums > Custom icons where you will find the tool to upload them. Then visit each group and/or forum in Manage Forums, edit them, and select thge custom icon you want to use.

The next update (5.0.5) will also goie you the ability to create icons for when there are new, unread posts present.

If, on the other hand, you mean replacing icons that just appear in the UI then locate your SP theme folder – look in the ‘images’ folder – this is where you will find them. You can simply replace them – and it is easiest, of course, to use the same file names.

if the latter then as always we recommend that you create your own SP theme so that any customisation is not lost during a future update. (http://codex.simple-press.com/codex/themes/theme-basics/creating-a-theme/)

Does that cover what you need?

Hi there,

Regarding custom icons.

I noticed that they can be dragged to desktop. Is there a way to embed them so that custom icons cannot be copied? Thank you in advance.

Interesting question and one I do not know the answer to. Do you know? Anyone know?
I can do some research…

that is no different than any other image on a website…  I have seen some fancy js that tries to prevent copying of images…

There is pretty much nothing you can do to stop someone from ‘stealing’ an image, video or audio file from a website. There are even special programs or browser plugins that are designed to do just that.

I probably wouldn’t worry about that as much as someone hotlinking your image or icon for use on their site.If someone can hot link it why bother to download and use it? Just point to the image from the site that hosts it. 🙂

A good example of hotlinking is Mr Papa’s image of the cruise ship in his signature.

That image is http://cruisetalk.org/sig.gif. Every time you see that image this support site has to retrieve it and then show it.

That can lead to to problems. One of which is that if http://cruisetalk.org/ is down then any page here that tries to access it will load very slowly or maybe not at all. The other is of course what would happen if that image was changed or deleted.

If you are concerned with people using your picture or image files I would first start with disallowing hotlinks. There are several ways to do this but most site management cPanel options give you a leach protect setup that you may want to investigate first.

There is a WordPress plugin that I use called “WP-Protect” that prevents people from highlighting and selecting text or images, and also prevents users from copying text & images. It also disables the right mouse options.

It is not going to stop people that know how special tricks on copying text & images but it will prevent 99% of users from taking your work. 

Hope this helps.

And getting back to icon problems, I have downloaded some free fancy icons and then uploaded them to the forum using the “Forums – Custom Icons” uploader. 

I have then gone to the “Manage Groups And Forums” section and selected the relevant image files for each group/forum by clicking on the “Edit Group” and “Edit Forum” buttons. 

After I save the uploads I then refresh my forum page and nothing has happened. The image files are very large and I am thinking that they are too large to display, although I would have thought that they would be shrunk automatically to the right size. 

My forum can be found at http://lowcostmarketingstrategies.com/forum/

Any suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks 🙂

Odd. As you can see we use them here as do many users – so far with no reported problems.

Can you go back and check the group and forum records – make sure they dud update correctly?

Also check the Integration > Storage locations. Where is your custom icons folder located and is it marked as both readable and writable?

I am a bit confused here. I checked the group and forum records and they did not update at all. I tried many times but it refuses to update. 

I have included a screen shot of my permissions for the relevant folder. 

mmm. The only possible reason I know of that stops a forum or group record from updating – and I thought this was fixed! – is if the display position is not set. Can you make sure that it is set (i.e., turned on) and try the update again?

The files that I am trying to upload are .png so there should not be any problem. I have attached an image of what I think you are talking about with the display position. 

I tried the update again but no luck 🙁

Scott, I have not seen a reply to Andy’s request (did I miss it?) for you to check forum – integration – storage locations and make sure that its okay for storage… I see your server permissions, but want to verify its web accessible by us…

If that is good, then perhaps you could provide a temp account via pm to yellow swordfish and myself with sp admin caps so we can see whats going and look at the ajax response…

Hello Mr Papa,

I have sent you a PM with details.

Thanks 🙂

taking a look… quite odd… thinks its saved and in fact something is evident by the remove being shown…  but should be the image…

now, those images are huge!  420×420…   I would suggest something more like 32×32 but definitely smaller… we dont adjust the size, because users are free to use what size they want – some go smaller than our 32×32 and some go slightly larger…  I dont believe that’s related to the problem, but when displayed it will look most odd at that size…

can you look at your db for me?  for the twitter forum, please look in the sfforums table and then the twitter forum row…  is there anything listed in the forum_icon column?