This article is cross-posted from my blog on DotNetNuke.com.

Ever since the localization framework was first introduced in DotNetNuke 3.0, it has always been our intention to go back and complete the localization story for DotNetNuke.  When localization was...

I am pleased to announce the release of DotNetNuke 5.4.4.  This maintenance release resolve’s two significant breaking changes that slipped through in 5.4.3 and resulted in us pulling the 5.4.3 release. Below are the highlights from this months release. As usual, you can see a full list of changes in the changelog.

Major Highlights Fixed issue with ExecuteSql method overloads to be able to handle ExecuteSQL(string,...

I have often heard it said that people have difficulty creating skins for DotNetNuke.  I am always baffled when I hear these comments especially in light of what I see in the competing skinning engines on other platforms.  In this series of posts I’ll be looking at the basics of DotNetNuke Skinning, creating a complete DotNetNuke skin and associated containers, dispelling a few Myths and Misconceptions about DotNetNuke Skinning and finally we’ll wrap up the series by comparing the DotNetNuke skinning engine with those of some other web platforms.

• Part 1: Understanding the Basics
• Part 2: Building a Skin
• Part 3: Building Containers
• Part 4: Packaging
• Part 5: Myths and Misconceptions
• Part 6: Skin Engine Comparison

During the course of this series, we’ll be working towards building and packaging a skin that is based off of the Dreamy design template from the Open Source Web Design site.  This template uses a very simple design layout which should work well for explaining the basic concepts of DotNetNuke skinning.

Understanding the Basics

In the first part of this series we’ll be covering the basics of DotNetNuke Skinning.  My intent is to demystify some of the terms that we use and to relate them to our simple design.  Once you understand the basic elements that make up a DotNetNuke skin, then the rest of the skinning process becomes very easy.

A Little Background

One of the original goals we had when the DotNetNuke skinning engine was first created in 2003 was to make skinning accessible to both developers and designers.  This fundamental requirement has driven many of the changes over the years and continues to shape how we think about skinning in DotNetNuke.  From the very outset we thought that it was important that skin developers should be able to use whatever tool they were comfortable with and that they should not require any knowledge of programming in order to create cutting edge designs.  We also thought it was important that we put as few restrictions as possible into the skinning engine which would provide skinners with complete freedom in their designs.

The DotNetNuke skinning engine supports 2 different types of skins:  HTML Skins and ASCX Skins.  HTML Skins are the most basic form of skin and allow designers to use whatever HTML editor they desire.  When HTML skins are installed in DotNetNuke they are automatically converted to ASCX skins in the background.  During the conversion, the only part of the HTML skin that is retained is the innerHtml of the body tag.  Anything in the HTML Header will be discarded.

The DotNetNuke skinning engine recognizes a “Skin” as having two distinct entities: skins and containers.  These elements can be packaged and installed as a single package or as two distinct packages.  We’ll discuss containers later in this series and for now will focus on just the main skin package.  All of the concepts translate directly from skins to containers with a few minor differences.  If you understand how to create a skin, then creating the associated containers is easy.