Frank,

My first recommendation to your boss would be for him to hire a "standards developer" who knows how you use a spell checker and isn’t illiterate.

Second I would recommend that he take a little money out of petty cash and invest in one of the many well written skins out there and have someone familiar with DNN "massage it" for his purposes.

I have been building web sites since before Algore invented the internet using everything from simply HTML code to scratch built ASP sites. For most of my clients I suggest DNN as the best match for them.

I go back to the "Ibuyspyworkshop" days and am thrilled to see DNN come of age. Is it perfect? No. Are there things that frustrate me? Sure, but all things considered it is an amazing app and even more so considering the purchase price.

Unlike you I am very grateful to those who have blazed the trail for this community. The first skin contest provided me with the basis for so many sites I could never count them. I have modified and "tweaked" those skins in ways that their own designers wouldn’t recognize them. For a lot of charity and non-profit sites this was their only path into a full featured site.

For corporate clients I have purchased some high quality skins from several good vendors out there. Again these have often been modified extensively but gave us a good base to work from.

I am excited about the contributions in this contest. They will provide entry level users with professional looking sites out of the box and a good jumping off point for expanded development. The best way to learn, and expand your skill set is to see how someone else does things and hack your way around the code modifying, learning, and growing. There are several skins in this contest that I am sure I will learn a lot from, and use as starting points to bigger and better things.

I would love to see this become an annual event. What better way for skin developers to show off their talents AND give back to the community and what better way for DNN to keep expanding into new directions? Maybe do a Social Media category, multimedia category, or most creative use of AJAX or other technologies. Most versatile or flexible would be interesting categories as well. Imagine a skin that can have a user modify the entire color scheme by entering the base color code or be able to modify all the graphics via a "settings" menu. Sadly my imagination for ideas is far more limited than the creativity of developers is capable of. Frankly I’d also love to see a module contest as well.

There are a couple "majors" that did not contribute to the contest and that surprised me. One in particular has probably the biggest and best collection of free skins out there and has the thanks of a grateful community. But that is ok, it opens up the field to others that are just getting started.

I suggest that instead of complaining about the FREE contributions you take the time to do put together a skin that meets your standards and contribute it to the cause. Then we can see some other insensitive and ungrateful fool rip apart your hard work.