If you like one or more of the currently available skins for the Privateer Theme, but do not like the colors used, want to use different graphics, or have the graphics on your server stored in an odd place, you can easily modify the skin to be more along the lines of what you are wanting.
At their core, skins are nothing more than a set of database commands used to update privateer theme options with new settings to provide wanted looks.
Because they are text files, you can open them in text editors, change different things within them to be what you want or need, save the changes, and use the end result.
Skins that I make for the Privateer generally consist of two or more files:
- The Skin File:
This is the file containing all necessary database option adjustments to apply a skin to the Privateer Theme.
These are located in /privateer/stylesets/ and have the skin name as part of the file name and an extension of .sql. - The Skin Readme:
Readme files for the skins I create are located in /privateer/stylesets/read-mes/ and have the name of the skin with a .txt extension.
These contain any special information related to getting the skin set up properly, the presumed image path directory used, and colors used.
When you want to edit a skin, you should locate both the skin file ( make a backup copy of it ) and the read me file ( read the readme file! ).
Because different people install WordPress in different ways, and the option data within skin files often contains image urls, you may find yourself needing to adjust the image paths to suit your server setup.
Most skins for the Privateer Theme assume an image location starting with /wp-content/themes/privateer/stylesets/ . If you have your wordpress install located in /site rather than / ( root ), you can do the following to make a skin which uses graphics work on your site:
- Hire me:
Contact me and arrange to have me fix the directories to work on your server for a small fee. (expensive) - Edit theme options:
Track down the file urls in the various options within the Privateer theme and hand edit them. (slow) - Edit the Skin File:
Open the skin in a text file, search for the beginning of the current image locations, and replace matches with what is needed for your own site. ( cheap and fast )
So, here is how you would edit the Blue Music skin if your server is set up to have /site/wp-content as the wordpress content directory:
- Open the banner-blue-music-readme.txt file ( the skins readme )
- Note the Base Image Path Assumed
/wp-content/themes/privateer/images/qs/bluemusic - Open the skin file ( Banner_Blue_Music_styles_only_set.sql ) in a text editor
- Do a search and replace on the entire file, searching for /wp-content/themes/privateer/images/qs/bluemusic and replacing it with /site/wp-content/themes/privateer/images/qs/bluemusic
- Save the file
- Upload the resulting skin file to your server (overwriting the existing skin file)
- Apply the skin via the Privateer – Quick Display – Change Style menu.
As you can see, it is fairly simple to change the file paths associated for a skin.
When you like the layout of a skin, but don’t like the colors, there are a few options currently available:
- Apply the skin and manually change colors
Effective, but time consuming in some cases - Hire me to change the colors
Effective, but a bit expensive - Edit the Skin File
Typically quick and easy.
Let us assume that you want to change some of the colors in the above referenced Blue Music styleset.
When you open the readme for it, you will see a list of colors used (usually…sometimes I forget)
Find the color that you want to replace and choose a color to replace it with.
Then…
- Open the skin file in a text editor
- Do a search and replace, searching for the color in question and replacing it with the color wanted.
For example, we want to change #97E7FE to #FFFFCC…so a search for 97E7FE replacing it with FFFFCC will change all instances of the first color to the second color. - Save the file
- Overwrite the original file on the server
- Apply the styleset
A few quick search and replace commands can alter all of the colors within a skin.
For certain skins, you may want to replace the images that are used with your own images.
When doing so, if you want the look to be right you should make sure that your images are the same size as the skins images.
Within skin readme files, images used are typically listed along with the presumed image path, so you can locate them and replace them with the images that you want to use instead.
With the above, you should be able to use the existing skins to create versions with completely different color sets.