What are evoSkins?

What are SkinPacks?

You will find dozens of additional skins on http://skins.b2evolution.net/ that you can download in the form of zipped SkinPacks.

To use a skinpack, just unzip it into your /skins folder and the new skin will be immediately available. (Make sure however, that the skinpack you use is compatible with your specific version of b2evo).

What's the difference between evoSkins and a CSS style switcher?

Good question! Why do we need evoSkins when we already have CSS?

As a matter of fact, an evoSkin can be as simple as a custom CSS design. But evoSkins/SkinPacks include more than just color or style skinning information! Different evoSkins will vary not only in colors and style, but also in how they work.

Here are a few examples:

• Some evoSkins may have popups for comments while others display them inline;
• Some evoSkins may have a very light HTML footprint for use on Palm and mobile devices and others may have a full-featured output;
• Somes evoSkins may use plain standard HTML/XHTML, others XML, others WML, others cHTML, and others even FLASH! ( BTW, if you are a Flash designer and want to work on accessibility compliant Flash Blogging, please contact me! );
• Some evoSkins may display only a list of post titles until you click on them, others will act as traditional blogs.

Technically, in addition to color & style elements, evoSkins/SkinPacks also include interface logic and templates for the main screen, the comments screen, the stats screen, the user profile editing form, etc. There really is no limit to how complete and complex an evoSkin user interface can get.

Where are the skin files?

In the folder /skins ; each subfolder is a different skin.

You can add skins by adding/duplicating folders.

You can delete skins by deleting their folder.

How does the blogger choose a (default) skin?

You can set the default skin (displayed when the reader hasn't selected one yet or when the selection doesn't exist any more) on the blogs properties screen in the admin. You could also override this setting in a stub file.

You can also force a skin -- thus preventing a blog to be displayed in any other than the intended skin -- by unchecking "allow skin switching" in the admin.

How can I make my own skin?

In a nutshell: by editing the files in the skin folders.