My Joomla site template makes a mess of Kunena

Introduction

There are millions of different Joomla templates on the market and their developers have different ideas about how to build templates for Joomla. Some of those ideas are good and some of them are not so good. Every day we receive questions about why people’s websites don’t seem to be functioning well when they use Kunena. The general answer to these issues is that most people don’t spend enough time planning their sites before they install Kunena’. No one can properly answer that question about which should come first: your Joomla site template or your Kunena forum. It depends on what is more important to you.

Your Joomla site template is the most important thing to you

If your Joomla site template is important to you - and Kunena doesn’t work with it - you should contact the author of your Joomla site template and explain the problem to them and ask for their help. Any reputable Joomla template developer should provide those kinds of services especially if you purchased a template from them.

Many Joomla “template clubs” exist on the internet and it’s a thriving business. When you are looking at those sites it may help to ask the question, “Does your template work with Kunena?” Kunena has become one of the most successful Joomla extensions on the market today (with over 500,000 websites using it around the world) and therefore, if these template clubs want to attract further business it’s in their own interests to make sure that their templates work with the most popular Joomla extensions that people are downloading and using on their websites. We encourage users to push Joomla template developers to make their products work with the popular Joomla extensions because it’s in everyone’s best interests: yours, theirs and ours.

Kunena has been tested with the default Joomla templates that ship with the Joomla installation package. As far as possible we try to ensure that Kunena works flawlessly with those templates. In cases where you are using a third-party template (or one of your own design) the cause of most of these issues lies within the choice you made: your Joomla site template is more important; that doesn’t mean that Kunena is defective simply because you’re using something that Kunena has not been tested with.

Your forum is the most important thing to you

If your forum is more important to you, then look at what templates work with Kunena or look at fixing up the problems that you have with your Joomla site template so that everything works together.

Kunena has been tested with the default Joomla templates that ship with the Joomla installation package. As far as possible we try to ensure that Kunena works flawlessly with those templates. In cases where you are using a third-party template (or one of your own design) the cause of most of these issues lies within the choice you made: your Joomla site template is more important; that doesn’t mean that Kunena is defective simply because you’re using something that Kunena has not been tested with. Sometimes we may have overlooked issues arising from using the standard Joomla templates and we will do everything possible to correct those problems so that other people won’t encounter them.

How to fix your problems

Some people can fix their problems themselves and some people can’t. Nearly every problem that we’ve seen can be fixed really quickly if people know a few things about web design and about the building blocks of the internet (in particular about CSS).

(1) Try different Joomla site templates until you find one that works for you.

(2) Read the good help that is given on the [Frequently asked questions](../../faq/frequently asked questions). Learn to use the web developer’s tools that are included with (or that can be added on to) your web browsers (e.g see Firebug).

(3) While every problem is unique, the approach to asking questions should be the same. If you have a problem with your Joomla template then please give other people the details about where the problem occurs. A screenshot helps but the URL of your Kunena forum will help others find and help you faster. We respect your right to privacy. If you don’t want to provide that information, that’s OK. As we all know, every problem is unique and it’s impossible to give general solutions without knowing what’s causing the specific problem.

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