Skin Creating
 

Anyone got any good guides on creating skins or styles? I had a good search, but all I can find is people's own styles to download. I am really looking to do the whole background, images, shabang type of thing, but I aint got a clue on where to start :)

Hoping to different themes for the band forums I have on my site

Cheers

Watson

Best I could give you is learn CSS and xhtml, here is a good place to learn http://www.w3schools.com/

the first thing i would suggest is to study Vbulletin templates,
mess around, find out what code is what, what goes where, and what changes what.

best thing to do to figure out how to code a skin

Just use the vBulletin admincp to mess around changing colours on a test board using the templates features to change things dead easy. Create new cats and thread images to use. That's all I did and then searched for lessons over on vB on how to do things I wanted to add like a page border and fixed narrow width etc.

I'm thick at coding and was still I was able to create a new skin on my site without getting to technical on the coding side of things.

Its like drawing... Remember how there was always this kid in class/school that could draw amazing pictures.....I am a stick figure guy.... Mess around with the GUI css and if need be purchase a pre-made skin and mod it to your taste. Its like buying a house and then painting it and building an addition. :devious:

Start with the header and footer templates, they control the basic forum layout. From there, the FORUMHOME templates control the display of the main forum showcase (i.e. what you see when you visit index.php). The FORUMDISPLAY templates will modify what you see when you enter a forum.

This is a good way to start, but I just want to note that everyone learns their own way. Do what comes easy to you.

When I first started learning how the templates worked I started with the postbit and worked my way out. The order I work in goes something like: header -> footer -> postbit -> showthread -> threadbit -> forumdisplay -> forumbits -> forumhome.

Alot of people tell me that is backwards, but it works best for me. The usercp and other sections I leave for last. They are seen less then forumhome/forumdisplay/showthread so you can get away with using a default template in these areas most of the time, or at least save them for a later date.

cheers guys, I will have a good rumage around and fool around on a test site. Spose these things take time to do. And thats what I have got lots of atm :p