I purchased a skin that comes with a certain structure of panes, with narrow advertisement and news panes on the left, a wide content pane and left and right panes below this. A would like a simetrical structure for some pages. Can I get this without messing with the source code?
I mean, can I get simetrical panes through page templates or something?
I don't know if I am explaining myself correctly. I used to believe that what I call "panes structure" was the template. But I went to the template tuturials and I found that it is about default modules-
The skin in question is www.snowcovered.com/snowcovered2/Default.aspx?tabid=242&PackageID=5084

Start by learning a little bit about DotNetNuke skins by reviewing Lee's wonderful tutorials (scroll down on the page to find the tutorials about skins) on this subject.

Then, you should be able to take the skin that you've purchased and modify it to your liking.  I would do this by making a copy of the skin's .zip file and working with it rather than the original.  Once done, you can upload the modified skin to your site and use it.

Here is a more direct answer to your question:  YES!  You can modify your skin without modifying core code.  The skin is a "template" for how a page should look.  Making the modification to make the panes symmetric should be quite easy, once you understand how panes work.

Joe, thank you. But I think you need to be a little more especific with a beginner like me. Of course I had already checked out the tutorials you mention before posting the question. But all what I found there about panes is an advice to start with the minimum number of content panes, and to add further panes as one needs them. Where exactly in the tutorials is it explained how to add a pane, or how to turn assymetric into symmetric panes?

If you are new to skinning I would view all of the tutorials in Issue no 5 and 6 as this starts with introducing the principles of skinning. - it will show you how to create a skin using tables, and this will be the method that you will need to use to edit your skin. Basically all you will need to do is edit the structure of the tables and then add in the code for creating additional content panes, or you could also remove some of the content panes.

- the only thing that you have to ensure is that you keep 1 content pane and it has to be named 'ContentPane'

Issue no 5 and 6 should get you started with all the information you need, hope this helps,

Hi Lee, Joe Craig and all DNN Magazine members !

This is my first post here, so let say "Well Done". DNN Magazine is a fantastic set of documentation as far I could see until now.
I am a ASP.NET Developer with more than 6 years in Web Development, but not much experience in Web Design. I found easy to understand the basic principles until here and I am starting with Skinnning watching the tutorial mentioned on this post.

My question I believe is very simple, so I'd like to know what exactly makes DNN identify the content-panels to be shown on screen and of course to be shown on the ControlPanel Panel dropdown?

I have created panels to my layout specifying 'id' and 'runat' attributes as well as 'class', but the only one which appears is the ContentPanel that, as mentioned here, has to be named 'ContentPane'.

I must be missing something very simple, can you help me?

Thanks.

Ok, sorry for any inconvenience ! :-) My mistake ! Just now I realized that need to logout and login again to view the new panels included.

Fine !

Thanks.