DotNetNuke Skins and Resources by ThinkofDesign

I agree. My skills at this point are good enough to feel comfortable modifying and existing skin but designing one from scratch, that's going to take some time.

You MUST know html, css and have a good working knowledge of graphics editing to develop any site, especially a DNN skin. I run across so many people who think that because they built a simple web site in FrontPage or took an 8 hour class in html that they are web developers. I've been doing this for 10 years and there is so much that I don't know.

True! I find it hard to do DotNetNuke skins, even if I did hundred of html sites already.

I agree. In this day and age, there are few among us who have the time and patience to sort through the DNN documentation to become apt enought to write a skin from scratch. Most people feel more at ease taking existing skins and modifying them to suit their purpose. That said, I found this to be a very arduous process the first time around.

One thing I feel that DNN lacks as compared to other open source ( (PHP based) CMS engines is the availability of "free" content (templates, containers, skins etc..) that can be used as a starting point to understand the various techniques.

@ Qube, all DNN installs come with a "default" skin, you can reverse engineer that as a starting point. 4.9 on up using the tableless minimal extropy skin, but 4.8 and below usings a more basic default skin that I used from when I started two years ago with skinning as my template. Even now I still atleast use the default skin's skin.css file and them just handcode from scratch the .aspx files for the skin.

I must vent a little here. I have the xhtml & css skills. What I need is a straightforward tutorial on how to develop a skin. I cannot for the life of me find anything helpful. I've registered on 4 different DNN sites, and I still haven't found any tutorial to walk me through the process.

All I really want is a list of necessary files & extensions, what essential tags & information must be included, and sample code. Is that too much to ask for?

Part of my problem is that I only have admin privileges on a DNN site, so I cannot get under the hood like I want to. I admin other sites that have many open source tools, such as Word Press, Drupal, & PHP Nuke, and their documentation tends to be much more user friendly, and...well...open.

What is it about the DNN community that is so obfuscated? Where is the real information?

This website is the perfect example. We have this article on 2 words before skinning. How about a tutorial on skinning itself?

If I ever figure out skinning (provided I don't simply give up), my goal will be to write a tutorial that clearly spells out what files must be included.

If anyone finds an actual guide to skinning, a nuts to bolts guide, please let me know.

Signed,

Frustrated

PS - Thanks, my rant is over and after a few deep breaths, I feel much better

it's true man
and in my mind it's beter to make any web desginer build your skin

An Afterward from Hundredvisionsguy: I didn't give up. I stumbled upon 1 (count it 1) xhtml skin that was free and worked on my DNN site.

I reverse engineered it. I identified the necessary files. I examined the code. I left alone the first set of tags (all of the BREADCRUMB, LOGIN, control tags, etc..

Next, in the *.ascx file, I added some extra divs for applying centering techniques (read CSS Centering: Fun for All at css.maxdesign.com.au for reference), bg images, etc.. I also tried my hand at creating an extra pane.

I then uploaded the skin and applied it to a test page and compared the output to the *.ascx file mentioned above. The div with an id of contentPane (the one with the 'runat="server"' in the .ascx file) became dnn_contentPane on the test page.

Once I figured that out, I applied margins, floats, etc. to all major panes, and it worked, so my CSS had selectors for my panes like so:
dnn_leftPane {}
dnn_mainPane {}
and so on...

I later realized that I could have just as easily surrounded all runat=server divs and applied my CSS to the surrounding divs.

I also tested out the '@import url();' method on the stylesheet since I couldn't add a link tag in the head. It worked.

Yay!