Custom skinning

[HPIA]

Is there a tutorial or a way for me to make skins with out having to download one or anything. Is there something I can take to become a skinner? It is just I dont have the money to buy the skins.

[The-Ensemble]

do you mean someone who builds styles/skins/schemes? we go by all kinda names so its hard to know what people mean.
And no there isnt any class i've seen for this. I think their might be tutorials somewhere but i havent seen them. The easiest way to get the hang of this is to just play around with it. Create a new style/scheme/skin called testing or something and play around with coding.

[HPIA]

But how would anyone suggest I get started. Like literally. How would I start a new skin? For the record, I dont do the skinning on my forum.

[peterska2]

start off playing with the CSS.

Create yourself a new style, remove the tick from the box so it is not user selectable, and then on the drop down select main CSS. Admins can view all styles, so it doesn't need to be user selectable at all.

In here, play with the colors until you come up with something that you like. If your not sure what something is, turn it bright red or green or yellow or something then go and find it on the site.

Then find yourself some buttons (either grab a set from here, or make your own in your favorite graphics programme), create a new directory for them in your images directory on your server, upload them, go to all style options for your new style, edit the buttons path to the correct location for where you just uploaded them to.

And you are done. A basic style.

Even the buttons are optional. Some styles work well with the default buttons.

[HPIA]

Ah, Im getting it! Thanks you two. One more question. How do I add gradients and textures?

[Blaine0002]

in the 'background' part of the css put somthing like this
#5C7099 url(images/gradients/gradient_thead.jpg) repeat-x top left
color will be overwritten with the gradient image, so it dosent matter much.

[oninuva]

heh. So you make a gradient image...a jpg... waht size?

[Blaine0002]

whatever size you want, i would start out using an official vbulletin gradient as a photoshop template :)

[rogersnm]

you only need it 1px wide btw

[HPIA]

I copy and pasted that and it didn't work :(. I am a horrible skinner. I did that url(blah) thing and it didnt work at all.

Where can I get custom gradients and textures again?