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HomeHomeUsing DNN Platf...Using DNN Platf...Skins, Themes, ...Skins, Themes, ...How can we design a new skin?How can we design a new skin?
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4/9/2008 4:46 PM
 
Amrit Ray

www.hostingitrust.com
Joined: 1/25/2008
Posts: 2

Hi I am using DNN on one of my website to manage its content and the design is very basic. I have seen some skins that we can purchase and use, however, is there a way we can design the skin ourselsves? Are there any online documentation for doing so? And to what level can the designs be customized?

 
 
New Post
4/9/2008 6:37 PM
 
ROB AX

Joined: 9/3/2004
Posts: 2185

Yes, you can create your own skin.. and it's easy once you know how, but can be very confusing and frustrating until then.

Have a look through the documentation download here on the site. There's a doc in there about skinning.

Visit a bunch of the pages on this search: http://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+create+a+dotnetnuke+skin

Read what a token does

Make sure you specifically look for, and understand, the difference between html/xml and ascx skinning.

Then examine the default DNN Blue skin in the portals/_default folder.

You have full freedom over page structure (the skin) and module containers, but if you have any sense of detail and polish, you'll find that a large part of skinning a portal is in making the actual contents of the modules match the rest of the skin.

Rob
 
New Post
4/10/2008 10:22 AM
 
keeperofstars

Joined: 1/22/2008
Posts: 273

Yeap learning how to skin at first can be a difficult concept to grasp but once you have the concept, you can build your site to look just the way you want to in just a matter of moments once you get good. I can crank out a client skin in about 20 mins cause I have a few templates I have built to work off. If you are really interested in DNN and Skinning I have to say.

http://www.dnncreative.com/

is worth every penny $78 bucks I believe for a years worth of access to Lee's tuturials. He does a really good job at keeping it simple, but never skips a detail. If you watch all the skinning tuturials you will be able to take control of just about every aspect of your sites design. Now one downside / upside is he focuses on using pure CSS layouts, which is great cause its compliant / xhtml focused. He walks you through it all so you don't need to know how to make the layouts. The downside part is he uses house of nukes menu for navigation which is quite different from the solpartmenu / navmenu. You can do everything solpartmenu does but its different.

I bought a few skin packages and quickly racked up around a $100 bucks worth of skins which just kept falling short from what I needed. IE they would have a great layout but my site could have benefited from an extra pane. Well know that I know how to skin I just plop a new pane into the skin and move on with life.

So its very much so worth looking into. Once you build your first skin your 2nd skin is easy, and by the 10th skin all you find yourself doing is changing the CSS / styling from a skin you already have created.
 
New Post
4/12/2008 11:43 PM
 
Nina M


www.berrydigital.com.au
Joined: 1/23/2004
Posts: 1961

Robax is right - the skinning documentation is an important start - I don't know why people don't read it more.  I can tell you that most of the experienced skinners around would have read that over and over again too.

The skinning documenation really is excellent - I have a couple of copies printed out in our office - it's old and dogeared, but I refer back to it often and also - download a few free skins.

And here's another thing - you have to know something about html and css - you can't come into skinning and think - wow this is free - I'm just going to make a killing and create sites and just 'skin' them.  It would be worth alot for you to learn a little about dnn, get a few free skins and look at the code, and yes, there is a distinct diffrerence with html skinning and ascx skinning - it depends what you want to do. 

I would put more online if I wasn't so busy but I do try to provide new, quality free skins that people can take, learn from and see what I regard as 'best practices' for skinning. But that's just my opinion, and I'm sure there are plenty of experts out there who also have an opinion too.

Nina Meiers
Lots of free skins - Really there are.. 
http://www.xd.com.au - New look and feel
http://modulereviews.com (just updated - content being updated too)

Nina Meiers My Little Website
If it's on DNN, I fix, build, deploy, support,skin, host, design, consult, implement, integrate and done since 2003.
Who am I? Just a city chic, having a crack at organic berry farming.. and creating awesome websites.
 
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