It seems like forever since I've been active and busy in the DNN Community, at the level I would like to be I mean.

But things are falling into place and I was pleased to have my first of many newsletters finished and sent (still being sent as I write) to share some of the new changes on DNNSKINS and how we will be delivering our free skins in the future.

Of course they'll still be on DNNSKINS.com but they are going to be uploaded as our Facebook list grows.

We have spent months reworking, redesigning and simplifying the site so the focus could be on delivering cool skins quickly and efficiently, and putting some of our beautiful commercial skins online for users to purchase.

You can read more about what's going on with dnnskins on our  news page - Using the articles module from Ventrian of course, we'd like to use this page to keep users updated with the skins we're putting online, site updates and the newsletters we're sending out and getting really good feedback, so now we have to ensure that we continue with the momentum.

DNNSKINS Facebook Fan Page

But this post is about free skins for dotnetnuke, and it seems that DNN corp have worked hard in making changes to their business module and how they deliver information, so, I thought in keeping with their vision, I'd try to provide some more free upmarket but simple skins for people to register, log in and download.

Well it's been quite popular with three skins already online and as we get more fans, we'll be adding new skins.

The skins are all converted from free and open source css templates, and in the future, registered users will be able to get a bit of hands on learning on how to apply these very nice and simple skins to their sites.

We have made a conscious effort to make these skins compliant as far as we can, including CSS and XHTML so that users can feel confident that their new sites can be as good as many others out in the 'other open source projects' world.

What we have done that is a little different to the other skins we have packaged, is to NOT use the solpart or dnn nav menu for navigation, but use the links skinobject to create the menus to assist us in bringing about compliancy and reduce the time required for us to deliver these skins.

Naturally we'd love to have others help on the site, but alas, it's not like the early days of dnn when there were alot of active people donating skins, and the way we have handle the site may not make it easy for people to 'throw a free skin online'.  We are quite particular about the fact these skins need to work, and all skins are available for preview, and packaged neatly for both DNN 4 and DNN5.

We repackaged all our skins earlier this year - and I guess I should have had some posts online earlier talking about it, but we didn't make the time and here we are, a few months down the track and not alot of people know that.

So we're not asking alot from our subscribers, if you want free skins, then all you need to do is ask, and you can ask by being a fan on DNNSKINS.com facebook page and we'll simply keep adding in new free skins as the membership grows.  No catches,  no tricks, just a way for us to gauage how much effort we need to put in to the project!

We have been looking at the skinning document that has been drafted up for DNN 5 and are working to have some solid information and samples online too - and enjoying reading through the information since it's been so long since the documentation has been updated.

Having said that - I am impressed with the skinning engine dotnetnuke provides skin designers and developers incredible flexibility and with the argument of compliancy from the purists being sorted out now, I think it's a big step forward for users.

We don't have alot of sites running dnn 5 at the moment and found that the skins seem to work just fine on there. XD.com.au has been upgraded, way back from dnn 3 days and it's not really having any issues, I'm not in any hurry to pioneer using the latest builds. I'm done with the self sacrificing and being the guinea pig and think that the road less travelled is giving me alot more headache than it's worth.

However, I do admire those willing to forge ahead, and I have noticed much more conversation between DNNCorp and the public in letting people know what's going on with the builds. That is really good to see while not in line with daily builds like other open source projects, there is much more communication now so you don't feel so isolated in wondering when something will be fixed up.

Nina Meiers