How LigaType uses Skins

The main folder of your site, the top level, has skins folder called _skins. Each skin is itself a folder that resides as a folder within this _skins folder. Inside each skin are some HTML files as follows:

• layout.htm - this file describes how most pages in your site appear
• home.htm - this file describes how the home page appears
• example.htm - this file merely shows how the skin looks. It's only for previewing a skin.

In addition there is another folder called _skinname_files, where skinname is whatever the name of the skin is.  Inside this file, there are CSS style sheets and other skin-specific graphics.

You can define a default skin for your website. Additionally, each folder of your site can specify its own skin, which LigaType will use for that folder and all sub-folders within it.

Soon, you can specify the skin to use on a per-page basis as well.

Use the skin manager to upload and download skins as ZIP archives.

Skin Design

Skin design is no more difficult than writing an HTML page in a normal HTML editor. Granted, this is not easy for most people though!

The files that a skin needs to function, namely its layout and typography stylesheets along with supporting graphics, appear in a folder called _skinname_files/  where skinname is the name of the skin.  This makes it really easy to design a skin, because you can open the skin in an HTML editor or in a browser, and the editor or browser will know how to find all of the files your skin needs to show you what it looks like completely outside of LigaType.  So to develop a new skin, all you have to do is develop a simple webpage with the graphics and styles in this folder, upload it, and you're done.

To insert the page elements into your skin, the skin will use some basic ligatype commands. These commands appear inside double brackets  [ [   and ] ].  You can use any commands in a skin that you can use on any page.  For now, download the basic skin to see what kinds of commands are in there.