Changing the default skin

Go back to the bottom of the current portal_skins properties screen and you will see the current settings for the default skin:

All you have to do is click the down-arrow on the Default skin selector, and click on your new skin a_first_skin.

Then click the Save button.

You may have some questions at this point, so let me answer what probably will be bothering you right now:

I haven't made any changes to the logo or any other skins files yet, so is my site going to be blank or something?  No, the cool thing about Plone skins is that yoru skin inherits all the characteristics of the Default skin (remember that you copied the references to all of the Default Plone skin). That means that your site looks like the good old default Plone site until you start making changes, which is what you will learn to do shortly as you "customize" the logo, style sheets, page templates, etc.

I make a change (in an upcoming lesson) and when I look at the site, it does not seem to change. Is my skin not working? No, your skin is probably working, but the change may not be showing because your browser (FireFox, IE, or other type) has a cache running. A cache normally is a folder that stores the images, style sheets, and other parts of a web page that is viewed, so that if you go back to that page again, it loads faster. Things are only downloaded once. Reloading or refreshing your site does not necessarily clear the cache, but luckily there are easy ways to do it.

• In FireFox 2.x, click on the browser's Tools - Options - Privacy buttons. If you click on settings, select only the cache, unchecking all the others.  Once you change the settings, you can always just press and hold the <CTRL><SHIFT><DEL> keys and it will prompt you to clear the cache. Then you can click Clear Now. Reload your site and changes should be visible.
• IE6 and IE7, as well as all other browsers have similar ways to clear the cache.  In IE6 it was called temporary files. Just be sure to not clear the Cookies, as they are used to keep you logged into sites, and it would dump you out of your own site.

Now that we have an active skin, let's start the fun part of the lesson, changing our site design.