Forums / Cotonti / Skins / Skin Creation Help...

Alright, I'm very new here. And I'm not quite familiar to where I should be posting this but I'll post it here since it seemed the most logical place to post it.

I'm fairly good with graphic creation, website designing and all that jazz. I'm very interested in supporting Cotonti, and I wanted to create my own custom skin. Here are my problems.

1. I don't know where to start.
2. PHP knowledge is a bit weak.


I can handle HTML/CSS and Some PHP. But I'm far better with C++/VB.net/C#. =X

Anyways, could someone guide me on how to do this? If you PM me, I can provide you with my msn/aim contact info for help. =X

I'm good in Photoshop/Dreamweaver/Illustrator. So, yeah. =X

Thanks,
Tommy

Creating a skin for Cotonti is very easy, i think.

All you need to do is this :

1. Open these files :
-- sed-light.css
-- sed-light.en.lang.php
-- sed-light.php
-- sed-light.ru.php

2. Save them as to what your skin should be called, for example Zenzija :
-- zenzija.css
-- zenzija.en.lang.php
-- zenzija.php
-- zenzija.ru.php

3. Edit zenzija.php or as it was named before sed-light.php and add your name of the skin here on line 22. What you are basically doing is re-naming the files.

$skin_themes = array('sed-light' => 'Light');

and also on line 4-15 in the same file :

Seditio - Website engine
Copyright Neocrome
http://www.neocrome.net
[BEGIN_SED]
File=skins/sed-light/sed-light.php
Version=1.0
Updated=02.23.2008
Type=Skin
Name=SED-Light
Author=Xiode - XiodeStudios.Com
Url=http://www.xiodestudios.com
Description=Official skin

4. When this is done you need to start designing your theme/skin and the best way is to take a look, at least for beginners, is in these 3 files. As they can help you figure out where your header starts and ends as well as the others start and end. A big hint is <!-- BEGIN: HEADER --> and <!-- END: HEADER --> and <!-- BEGIN: MAIN --> and <!-- END: MAIN --> and <!-- BEGIN: FOOTER --> and <!-- END: FOOTER --> in these files :
-- header.tpl
-- index.tpl
-- footer.tpl

5. What i do when i'm designing is to start out on making the frontpage of my template, namely the header, index and footer files. Basically the framework of the upcoming design. I do this by making a single page where there is no separation between header, footer and index. Just a static page and then fine tune that. Adding comments like <!-- header ends here --> are good since it will help you later then you separate the parts that make up the page into 3 pieces.

6. After you separated the design into these above stated files, you need to take a look at all the other .tpl files that Cotonti uses. Some of them are tricky and have a lot of style="width:100%" and stuff, but if you love CSS you'll figure it out.

I hope this is a little hint to what you can do, when the first steps are done.

Thanks for the reply. I'm loving Cotonti so far. I'm going to finish setting up the Installation. I'll work on this after I get my homework finished. :)