Hello I am fairly new to this Dotnetnuke thing and I am trying to modify an existing skin and upload it to the production site.  What I have done was take out a couple of dnn objects one in particular was the DNN:Menu from the left pane. 

What I was hoping to do was simulate a graphical border around a module by creating a nesting table in which the first was bigger then the second and the inner table would hold the contentpane info whereas the outter table would have a background of a wooden picture fram so that the inner table with the contentpane info would not cover this wooden border and hence give a feel for a pictureframe concerning a web cam module I am using.

Anyway to make a long story short when I attempt to modify this left pane that had a object which showed the pages inside that same given folder hirachy and then zipped all the files up and uploaded the skin I was not able to use the skin.  The skin showed up fine i the skin list but when I went to apply it I got the following error message:
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Could not load skin:/Portals/_Default/Skins/CamCam/default.ascx Error: The file '/Portals/_default/skins/camcam/Admin/SolPartMenu.ascx' does not exist.

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The files I packaged up in the zip file was the following:

1. default.ascx
2. seperator.gif
3.defualt.ascx.bak
4.contentpane_template.html
5.skin.css
6.skin.xml
7.Thumbs.db
8. image folder


I called it camcam.zip using winrar.  Now when I don't delete this dnn object in the leftpane that reveals other pages in the current folder I don't get any such error even when I package the same exact files.  Some files such as the .db and .bak files don't obviously get imported which I expect but I am not sure why deleting this dnn object would cause this error at one point I took out the menu from the registered types at the top of the ascx file but it didn't seem to help any so put it back in and tried again still no luck.

The other question I ahve for you guys is I have attmepted multiple installs of skins calling them different names as I assumed you couldn't overrite an existing installation with another for example overrite webcam.zip with another file called webcam.zip is this possible?

For now however I need to know how to uninstall skin packages without causing integrity issues with the dotnetnuke framework hence causing it to crash.  I was thinking in terms of perhaps going to the server and deleting these given folders under the portal/_default/skin directory such as web cam, camcam, etc... but I wan't sure if that was a good idea given these folders were registered via dotnetnuke and if not unregistered properly didn't know if by deleting the physical folder on the ftp server it would break the dotnetnuke framework I have version 4.5.1 now.

Any suggrestions how to uninstall current skin packages and reinstall other skin packages correctly would be great.  I have looked at the tutorials however they deal with mostly building a skin from scratch opposed to modifying an existing skin to say have less panes or have the panes organized in a different way,e tc... 

What I am attempting to do is not a skin from scratch at this time but rather I am attempting to take a working skin and modify it to be able to work with just these web cam pages so it has basically the same feel as the whole site but with small adjustments needed to created this wood frame effect around this web cam module thanks again for your help

Bo

Bo,

I would first recommend that you review the tutorials at DNN Creative related to DotNetNuke skins. If you'll review them, I think that you'll have a much better understanding of how skins work in the DotNetNuke framework.

You can install and uninstall skins using the tools available on the Skins menu item on the Host and Admin menus.

A quick tip -  you need to remove the .db and .bak files from the zip file. - if DotNetNuke encounters these files in the skin zip file it will appear as though it has installed the skin but it will actually abort the complete installation of the skin.

If you upload a skin zip file named webcam.zip and then upload another skin zip file named webcam.zip it will overwrite the first skin installation files.

If you are starting out I would look at  the tutorials in:Issue no 5 and 6

Thanks,