I have found a phpBB style I really like but when installing it and viewing the source it seems to be made up of a mixture of tables and css. Now am I right in thinking search engines dont like tables? Is so do you think its best to look for a style that is just css driven? Any advice on this matter would be great Thanks in advance!
Huh? Uh... no... Search Engines love tables... coffee tables, end tables, round tables, folding tables, card tables..... ...they even love HTML tables.... it doesn't make a difference....
You could always convert the html tables to CSS tables (google it). Search engines sometimes prefer CSS over HTML tables, but it won't make a huge difference either way.
A standard phpBB3 installation isn't hugely SEO friendly anyway so Tables / CSS won't make a great amount of difference. The forum I co-run is based on Prosilver so the index page and viewforum are 99% CSS, however the custom viewtopic design is structured by a table. Still seems to index pretty well So in response to your question, it honestly doesn't matter. Too many people make a big deal when it comes to tables and SEO
Personally I prefer table less template (CSS base) for third party scripts. I am not sure if there is any impact on SEO but most of the third party script providers i.e. wordpress etc. prefer to use CSS base theme rather table base. Edit: Wordpress.org doesn't accept theme if you have used single table in your theme. Kailash