mojoPortal Tips: Creating a Custom Skin, Part 2

Last Updated on Tuesday, 20 November 2012 12:09 Written by Carole Bennett Tuesday, 20 November 2012 12:00

In Part 1, we covered the basic elements involved in designing a modern website; today, we’ll begin examining methods of creating a mojoPortal skin.

There are two basic ways to begin a custom skin for mojoPortal; modify an existing skin, or create one from scratch. Even with the “from scratch” route, there’s the school of thought to “hand-code everything”, or use an automation tool to handle some of the more tedious aspects of design. If you’re faster at writing your own .css code from the ground up, by all means, do so – for me personally, that’s far too time-consuming, so I use an automation workflow to address some of the more tedious aspects of this phase.

mojoPortal Tips: Creating a Custom Skin, Part 1

Last Updated on Sunday, 11 November 2012 04:25 Written by Carole Bennett Friday, 16 November 2012 12:00

Creating a mojoPortal skin is relatively easy, as CMS systems go. However, it’s not just pick colors, click a button, and go. There are various considerations to keep in mind, and steps to go through in order to achieve maximum results. Today in Part 1, we’ll cover the foundation elements for creating your mojoPortal skin.

If you’re an experienced designer, you’re probably already familiar with the 960 grid system; the good news is that you can still use it in designs for mojoPortal skins, so don’t try to constrain yourself to the 3-column layout that is the default for mojoPortal; we’ll cover how to implement layout variations in later parts of this series.

nopCommerce Tips: Creating a Custom Layout, Part 4 – Adapting Skins

Last Updated on Friday, 3 August 2012 10:42 Written by Carole Bennett Tuesday, 14 August 2012 12:00

Read Part 3 here!
It’s safe to say that for every target demographic, there’s a unique approach that will best achieve your goal of reaching them. Whether it’s using a color scheme or graphics, or a layout that shows your product line off to its best advantage, there is no one storefront that will appeal to all demographics. It’s a given that you’ll want to customize your nopCommerce store’s appearance to appeal to your customers – let’s touch on ways to modify an existing skin for that purpose.

nopCommerce ships with two web themes: DarkOrange, and nopClassic, under Nop.Web/Themes.

mojoPortal Tips: Using More than One Skin on a mojoPortal Site

Last Updated on Friday, 6 January 2012 09:53 Written by Carole Bennett Friday, 6 January 2012 12:00

One of the questions I see asked quite frequently on the mojoPortal forums is “How do I use a different layout on the home page?”  The best solution is to create two variants of your custom skin; one that’s meant to be the site-wide default, and one conforming to your exact specifications for the home page. The way to implement this:

1) Create your primary and secondary level skins.

mojoPortal Tips: Custom Skins and mojoPortal Upgrades

Last Updated on Thursday, 5 January 2012 10:21 Written by Carole Bennett Thursday, 5 January 2012 12:00

One of the great things about working with mojoPortal is the pace at which enhancements and improvements are added to this already-excellent content management system. Joe Audette, the chief architect, is very responsive to enhancement requests, and other members of the community also contribute improvements in features and functionality.

The downside can come when the improvements or enhancements implemented in a particular release include changes in how mojoPortal handles the UI, including alterations in the skins. The included skins are always updated, and periodically, new ones added to demonstrate the increased functionality. However, if you’ve created a custom skin for yourself, or a client, it can create some moments of extreme hair-pulling, and words best not shared with polite company.

To save yourself heartache and aggravation about fixing a custom skin after an upgrade, save this link: Important Skin Changes. At every release that impacts the UI, any changes that need to be made to custom-created skins will be added here. Usually, the two files that you’ll touch are the style.config and the theme.skin files contained in your skin’s folder. Remember that you’ll want to update the skin in the /data/sites/[your site number]/[your skin name folder] to be able to see the changes live.

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