Beginning DotNetNuke® Skinning and Design

Chapter 3. Installing Skin Packages

Adding a new DotNetNuke skin you found online is one of the easiest ways to customize a portal and give a site a new look. It's also a way to draw some inspiration from fellow designers and learn how they accomplished a particular design. Analyzing how other designers have architected their skins provides a good background for modifying an existing skin in Chapter 4, "Exploring Skins" and developing your own skin in Chapter 5, "Creating Custom Skins."

This chapter covers the following:

• Obtaining DotNetNuke skins online

• Reviewing the contents of a skin package

• Installing a skin using the DotNetNuke administration pages

• Installing a skin using the Install folder

• Controlling access to a skin

A good way to learn what's possible with skinning DotNetNuke is to see what others have done. A simple search for "DNN skins" on the Internet will return a large number of sites. Some skins are freely available online, and others charge a small fee. First, you'll poke around and see exactly what files are inside a skin package, and then you'll apply some skin pages in a couple of different scenarios.

What Is a Skin Package?

A skin package consists of one zip file. It contains all of the resources necessary to implement a skin on a DotNetNuke page. Chapter 1 introduces the concept of a skin and a container — two key DotNetNuke design elements. These two types of files are bundled into a skin package along with images and CSS files so the skin can be installed elsewhere. ...