Hello,
I've made some modifications and uploaded to my local development portal and got the left and right panes along with some other things working. However the layout is all messed up. Without knowing what it's supposed to look like and without the images I can't tell where you need to make changes. You can download the ZIP with my modifications from the following URL...
http://www.isilm.com/Portals/0/ForumSkin.zip
Please don't take what I'm about to say the wrong way, I'm not trying to be rude. By no means do I consider myself an advanced skinner but I think you need to take a step back and start with some more basics of DNN Skinning. I would analyze the skins included with DNN -- the HTML, the ASCX, the CSS and the XML files.
As for some pointers...
1. You don't need to do tokens for the [CONTENTPANE], [LEFTPANE] and [RIGHTPANE], just add them as id's to your TD or DIVs.
2. Any Tokens you do use must be defined in the XML file and include unique names as Timo indicated in his post. Simply adding the Token identifier doesn't do anything.
3. In the beginning, I would always start with one of the included DNN skins and add your modifications to it. This way all the standard stuff is in there (i.e. the control panel).
4. Check out the following links. They are good resources for DNN skinning info & tips...
There are a lot of others too.
I hope this helps and don't get discouraged!!!
Chuck R.