My boss decided to take a job creating a DNN skin for a client. No one of us is even remotely qualified or even familiar with DNN. And I got dumped on the job because I'm less obvious about being a flake than most of the rest of us.

We have a PSD of the design from the web designer, and I've been desperately reading everything I can about DNN and skinning, and I'm at a complete and utter loss of how to go about creating a skin. Help!?

I have Visual Studio 2010 (which I've never used before, ftr) installed, and I installed the skinning starter kit from the main DNN site, but it doesn't seem like it's loading things properly, and I'm really not sure what to do even get it set up properly (every tutorial seems to assume that I'm working with my own site, not with someone else's site), let alone how to go about converting the design into a skin (I understand the whole modules/containers/etc. thing and know what each thing should be, but not how to make it). All of the tutorials I've been able to find are more focused on telling you how to install the skin after someone makes it for you - well I'm supposed to be the one making it, not installing it!

If I had more time, I'd read around some more, maybe go and find some books, and try and learn how to do this properly, but I'm supposed to do this by Monday so I'm really freaking out now.

Is anyone willing to lead a complete and utter flake through the creation of a DNN skin with VS2010?

A big part of skinning is first understanding how to convert a PSD into HTML - this is where u need to start.  
VS is not really the ideal tool for this task.  Instead you should maybe start with Dreamweaver or Fireworks and photoshop.

At its core a DNN skin is really just HTML with some special code to define where elements like menus and containers get placed at runtime.
So for starters do you know how to convert a PSD into a workable HTML layout - this is where u need to start.

Westa

I just released the hugest sigh of relief ever, I think. HTML I can do. Photoshop-->HTML I can do. Dreamweaver I can do. That link to the Joe Brinkman series looks actually helpful too. Thank you so much. I'm going to see what I can get done with this now...