Thesis Skin Manager

Download quality Thesis skins
and feel good about your site.

Thesis Skin Manager

Intro

The Thesis skin manager is a free tool developed by us that gives users of the Thesis Theme greater control and easier management of Thesis skins. It functions much the same way as the WordPress theme administration screen and allows the user to easily install and switch between any compatible Thesis skin. Any Thesis skin developer can easily make their skins compatible with the tool using the developer instructions below.

General Install Instructions

Requirements:

  • Thesis 1.7+ only!
  • WordPress 2.9+ (Will not work on anything less!)

Tried to follow the instructions below but we’re unable to successfully install a skin? Click here to watch the full step-by-step video on how to install a skin using the Thesis Skin Manager!

** Start here if you are installing the skin manager for the first time **

  1. Download the latest version of the skin manager by clicking the download button below.
  2. Open your FTP program and connect to your site and browse to your Thesis custom folder (ie: yoursite.com/wp-content/themes/thesis/custom/)
  3. Upload custom_functions.php overwriting the file already there (note: if you have customized code in your custom_functions.php file already you can just merge the line from our custom_functions.php file into yours) – Back this file up before you go any further if you have existing code in it!
  4. Upload the “skins” folder and the file it contains (skins_admin.php) from the zip file to your custom folder.
Download

Your final setup should look similar to the below:

After Install

Thesis Custom Folder after Install


** If you already have the skin manager installed read how to add skins **
Adding a skin is very simple once you have the skin manager code installed (see steps above).

  1. Download and unzip the skin package to your computer
  2. Upload the themes folder (ie freshcompany, tt-easythesis, etc.) into your Thesis “custom/skins” folder you created above (note make sure you are uploading a folder one level deep, when you unzip something it sometimes adds an additional folder, you just need the main folder above where the skins actual files are – DO NOT RE-UPLOAD THE “SKINS” FOLDER THIS SHOULD ALREADY EXIST ON YOUR SERVER)

    3. Skins Folder

    Skins folder with Thesis Skins Installed


  3. Go into your Thesis options in the WordPress admin section and select the new option listed there called “Manage Skins”
  4. You should see a listing of all the skins you have installed, click the “Activate Skin” (red arrow in image below) button first
  5. Now click the “Import Options” (blue arrow) button (this will overwrite all your Thesis settings with the correct ones needed for this skin, if you need to revert later your should export your current settings under Manage Options first!) – your skin is now activated on your site, enjoy! Note: If you are using the Thesis nav menus you will have to re-check off your selections – we suggest you move to using the WP 3 menus instead to avoid this.
  6. NOTE: You may have extra nav items at first, go into your Thesis “Site Options” and click the save button to clear them and re-check off your desired nav items if necessary.

Activate Skin

Buttons to activate skins





Thesis Skin Developers Instructions

These instructions are for skin developers, if you are a general user there is no need to do any of the below.

We created the skin manager so any skin developer could hook into our functions for their own Thesis skins. Using the skin manager will make it much easier for your users to install and use your skins which will result in less support requests and higher custom satisfaction.

Notes:

  1. We ask you do not change or modify the attribution included with the plugin, we purposely kept advertising to a minium so you wouldn’t have to.
  2. Do not directly link to the download for the skin manager hosted here, instead link to this page. You shouldn’t host the code yourself as it will change over time.

Now that’s out of the way let’s begin!

All your skin files you be contained in a folder named after your skin (you can and should download any of our free skins to see examples of the below in action). Instead of the usual custom_functions.php and custom.css you should rename these files to base.css and functions.php and include them in the skins folder.

A typical setup should look like this:

Thesis -> Custom: custom.css, custom_functions.php -> Skins -> Skin Name: base.css, functions.php and other skin files.

In base.css you should add this to the very top of your file and modify to suit your needs, this is what the skin manager will pick up and display:
/*
Skin Name: Fresh Company
Skin URI: http://thesisthemes.com/free-thesis-skins/fresh-company/
Description: If you want a modern, clean and refreshing look for your business blog then look no further than Fresh Company. This theme is very nice to look at while still keeping your content front and center.
Version: 1.5
Author: ThesisThemes
Author URI: http://thesisthemes.com/
*/

In functions.php you should add this:
add_action('wp_head', 'base_css'); //Load base.css
function base_css() { ?>
<link media="screen, projection" type="text/css" href="<?php echo SKINURL; ?>base.css" rel="stylesheet" />
<?php }

Now export the all options .dat file from using the built in options manager in Thesis 1.7 and include this in your skins folder and call it: thesis-all-options.dat

Finally put a screen-shot of your skin in the folder and call it screenshot.png it should be about 240×192 – I used this service: http://www.thumbalizr.com/ – set the width to 240 via the box they provided after they present you with the image.

Now if you drop your folder into the skin manager “skins” folder your skin should show up and you should be able to activate it!