Welcome to the Discus 4.0 skin customization section. Here, you will learn how skins work, receive variable lists, and get tips to customize the appearance of Discus to fit in with your web site. The resources in this section will guide you through the very basics of how Discus reads and interacts with skins. You will learn how to tweak existing skins and to add headers and footers to your Discus board to integrate it with your site. You will also learn techniques to create your own unique look for your Discus board.

• Skin Primer: A brief introduction to skins used in Discus 4.0. This is highly recommended for anyone who intends to customize skins in Discus 4.0 or higher.

• Skin Editing: Details on the mechanics of finding and editing your skin files. Read the skin primer first!

• Different skins for different topics: A procedure whereby one can set up different skins for different topics on the board.

• DiscusWare On-line Skin Gallery: Hints to use the on-line skin gallery, which allows you to obtain new skins for your discussion board easily, safely, and conveniently. No programming knowledge or skin customization experience is needed to obtain new skins from the DiscusWare Skin Gallery.

• Adding IP Address Support to Legacy Skins: Tips to add support for displaying IP addresses on posts for those skins that do not come packaged with this support.

• How to format the first message one way and all subsequent messages a different way: Link to a post from Kevin Paulisse on the Discus Support Forum that explains how to set up two parts of a skin, and insert an IF-THEN-ELSE statement, to format the first message in a thread differently from all followups.

• How to make enhanced profile fields appear on posts: Link to a post from Kevin Paulisse on the Discus Support Forum that explains how to customize a message display to include selected "additional profile information" fields on a user's post.

• Writing a skin that DiscusWare can distribute: A guide for developers who wish to produce skins that DiscusWare can redistribute through the skin gallery.

• Paging of subtopics: A PHP-based skin modification that divides subtopic lists into chunks in the format of page 1, 2, 3, ...

• Template Language Reference: Documentation on the Discus Template Language, which is used to write templates and skins. Examples of variable and function use are included.

• Subtopic List Customization: Variables that can be used and other documentation on customizing the appearance of subtopic (thread) lists.

• Message List Customization: Variables that can be used and other documentation on customizing the appearance of message lists.

• Topic List and Topic Page Customization: Variables that can be used and other documentation on customizing the appearance of the board topics list, and other aspects of the board topics page.

• Skin Information Section: Using the skin information section to set up information about the skin and specify the default color scheme.