Adding RefTagger to a Simple Machines Forum Site

Over the last couple of months, several people have asked me if it is possible to add RefTagger to a forum site. I’ve set it up on a couple of different test installs, and it works very nicely. Forums are perfect places for RefTagger. If you run a forum site that deals with the Bible—or have plans to start one—I’d encourage you to give RefTagger a try. If you frequent a Christian forum site that has plain old naked Scripture references, why not send the administrators an emails and ask them to look into adding RefTagger?

There are a variety of different forum programs. vBulletin is probably the most popular, but since it’s not free, many use Simple Machines Forum (SMF) or phpBB.

Here’s a quick tutorial for adding RefTagger to your SMF site.

You simply need to add the RefTagger code immediately before the closing </body> tag in the index.template.php file in all of your active themes. (There are three installed by default.) You’ll find the </body> tag in the fourth section of code.

Here are the steps:

1. Go to your Admin Center (http://yoursitename.com/index.php?action=admin).
2. In the left sidebar, click on “Themes and Layout” under “Configuration.”
3. Click “Modify Themes.”
4. Select a theme, and click “Browse the templates and files in this theme.”
5. Click on “index.template.php.”
6. Navigate to the bottom of the fourth section of code and find the </body> tag (or just use Ctrl + F to find it).
7. Paste in the RefTagger code immediately above the </body> tag.
8. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and click “Save Changes.”
9. Repeat steps 3-8 to add the code to your other theme.

I don’t see how to edit the default theme “SMF Default Theme – Core.” There’s probably a way to do it in the Admin Center, but I don’t see how. There are a couple of workarounds. You can switch your default theme to something else and uncheck the box “Allow members to select the ‘Default’ them.” If you like the default theme, you can always Create a copy of it and set the copy as your default.

If you have FTP access to your site’s files, it is fairly easily to add the RefTagger code manually. Just navigate to the Themes/default folder, locate the index.template.php file, and save a local copy (and a backup copy, too, just to be safe). Open the file with Dreamweaver or WordPad (or whatever program you like to use to edit code), locate the </body> tag, and paste in the RefTagger code. Save the file. Upload it to your server, overwriting the original file. You’re all set. RefTagger should now be up and running on your SMF site.