doc for skins

phpslashers -

I've just upgraded to 0.71 and I'd like to change the look of my site.  The 
template documentation is a little dated.  I found that out there are three 
slashHead.tpl files in the default install and there doesn't appear to be 
any docs for the development of skins.  Could someone briefly make an 
outline of skins and perhaps we could get this in the docs.  If no one else 
has time write it up single handedly, I'll compile the responses, make it 
readable, and submit it to whoever for inclusion in the next release.  Some 
of the basic questions I have are:

1)  How do I now change the look of my site?
2) Why are there more than one version of each file and how do skins 
work?  I certainly don't want to do it three times over (or more) for each 
skin.  Some basic command line examples would be very helpful if they are 
explained.  Such as this little piece was from Luis in the mail archives 
addressing a question of how to restrict a site to only one skin - but I 
don't quite get it:

  $> cd $PHPSLASHROOT/templates
  $> for i in `/bin/ls en`; do mkdir no/$i; done
  $> for i in `/bin/ls no`; do echo 'skin.parent = 
"../en/$i"' >  no/$i/skin.ini; done

  essentially, create a directory for e/a template you have in "en" in the
  directory "no". and then create a skin.ini file that contains the line:
  skin.parent = "../en/$i" . where $i is the name of e/a one of the
  directories in the directory "en" ... it's more confusing to explain it than
  to code it... just read the shell code above...

4) What's the skin.ini file? What are some options that could be used?
3)  What if I have changes outside the skin files, how to I prevent those 
changes from being overwritten in the next upgrade?

Thanks for your comments.

P.S. another request for the config.ini.php file is to include the value of 
the logo file name "new_logo.gif" within a variable.  To me, it seems that 
file name is hardcoded into the html files and it's not intuitive why that 
file is used in slashHead.tpl as opposed to something like 
slashHead_logo.gif or something or rather.


Josh Udall
Botany Department
Iowa State University
Ames, IA 50011
(515) 294-7098 




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