| Skin Installation Guide: |
| Uploading the Graphics for your skin: 1. As always when you make changes to your board it is always a good idea to back up your database and your current board layout / skin. 2. Unzip the .zip file and you will see a number of folders. . 
When you extract your zip file you should end up with the folder structure here on the right. The air skin will be used as an example. 3. Inside of the vBulletin Files folder you will see a folder named after your skin. If you bought the "air" skin the folder would be called air... Upload that folder to your root forum directory. (Usually your pub/html/forum/ -that directory may vary depending on how you installed your board and your host. You should see your "images", "admin", "mod", etc. folders in that directory from when you installed your board. If you see those folders you should be in the right spot.) 4. Option: If you wish to "OVERWRITE" your existing smilies and icons (and use the ones we provided) you can upload and overwrite those as well. To do this, upload them into your "images" folder. Those two folders are located in this example in your "air" folder. NOTE: This will OVERWRITE your existing smilies and icons. So it's a good idea to back up the originals first. All I did was hue shift the originals to match the skin better. 5. That should complete your ftp'ing… Now let's move on to installing the actual skin files (the .XML files). 1. The first thing I suggest doing is backing up your current style. To do this log into your admin section/ Go to the Styles Area/ Choose Styles-Download/Upload/ Go to the top section that says "Download one of your style sets" and choose your current style (or the style you wish to backup) from the drop down/ Make sure the Get customizations made in this style and all parent styles is checked YES /Click the download button and save the file to your hard drive. Now you have a backup of your current style.  2. Now while in that same area go to "EITHER upload the XML file from your computer". The .XML file you want to upload will be in your unzipped .zip file and end with the extension of .XML It will be located inside of a folder located in your vBulletin Files folder. Skins that come in both fixed width and fluid widths will have two .XML files. If you wish to use both versions on your board you will need to install both of the .XML files.  a. Choose "(create new style) " if you want to keep your existing look and add this new skin as a selectable option from the users "edit options" area. From there they may select which style they want to use. Very important! If you get a style version error when uploading the .XML files you must check the box that says "Ignore Style Version/ Use style file even if it was created by a different version of vBulletin?". b. You can upload this Style using the "Create a new style" and still make it your "Default" style. Do this by keeping your old style, uploading the new one using the "Create a new style" method. Then once it is uploaded tell your Default / or Current style to use the newly uploaded styles replacements and templates. (To do this, once you have uploaded the new style go to The Style Manager. Locate your default style. From the default styles drop down choose "Edit Settings". Then for Parent Style choose the skin you want to use. That is it. You are done...) |