@essblack it looks that you missed the renaming class point described here: http://b2evolution.net/man/skin-development-primer > Starting your own skin > Edit the skin.class file

Please note that the class name is directly related with the name of the folder where the skin "lives" in. For example: if the folder name is myownskinskin, then the class definition must be done as: class myownskin_Skin extends Skin. It's important to keep the uppercased S on the Skin suffix of the class name.

Well, thank you sir for taking the time to respond to my post for help. I am a little bit confused by a portion of your reply, however. I am in no way tryring to create my own skin or even modify one -- although, eventually I'd like to learn how that can be done. No, in my case I simply downloaded a skin from the repository and followed the instruction page on where to place those files on my site that make up the skin definition. If I recall, that would be My_Site/Public_html/B2E/Skins. The Skin I downloaded from the repository is called "December". It says it is version 6 compatible.

I can now see the skin in the staging area where the other installable skins are located, but in the area right above the name of the skin it has the Malformed Skin Class warning. Because of this, when I hover the mouse over the selected skin, nothing happens. In other words the option to install is non existent.

I hope that you are not telling me that even after downloading a pre made skin from the repository that I must also fiddle with the internal coding of the .php file to get the darned thing to work. That would indeed be a step backward from what I could do (actually, was doing) with Wordpress over two years ago.

I really do like B2Evo over Wordpress so far. I am hoping that whatever my stated problem is there is a more suitable solution for a beginner who has no experience in coding skins or templates.

Thanks!

Wait, hold on, you put me onto something, and it is amazing how one little innocent non descript step can derail an entire process. What I knew, but did not think anything of at the time was my temporary problem with my FTP Client. As a consequence I was forced to move the files over via the built in Cpanel File Manager. As a result, I ended up creating the home folder in which the associated skin files would be placed. I spelled it correctly with a capital "D". The _skin.class.php file has a lower case "d".

I think this may be it.

Whatever the outcome, thank you for your insight.

@essblack were you able to successfully install and use the skin?

Yes!