I'm absolutely new to DNN skinning and I feel extremely overwhelmed. I am trying to convert a static HTML template to a DNN skin and downloaded the skinbuilder for Visual Studio. That wasn't extremely intuitive. Next I downloaded the Skinning tutorials put together by Joe Brinkman. I have tried to make a DNN skin from my static HTML page using both of these and I feel like I'm even more lost than when I started.

Is there a straight forward guide that says, "Put this tag here to get this and so on and so on." I am feeling very lost. My static HTML design is very simple and I thought this would be a simple thing to do. So far I'm striking out badly.

I need some hand-holdling. I'm used to rolling websites with Visual Studio and DNN, being dynamic HTML is difficult to grasp. HELP?

If you can learn by example I would suggest you look at the default skins provided by DNN during install (MinimalExtropy).  They contain the HTML versions.  Then start from scratch writing a simple table based skin with a logo, search, login, nav, content pane, and footer.   The object types and some simple parameters are listed in the MinimalExtropy html files.

The first skin I ever wrote was just a series of tables just like I described above that included all the required elements. 

As far as I know (and I'm 95% sure) - no, you can't have nested content panes. However, there are modules that allow you to pull off some more advanced layouts depending on what you're looking to do.

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Wells Doty Jr
Online Content Development