I suspect your editor screwed the first line (<?php), but that should give another error. For the rest: the description of your actions sound correct.
What you can do is the following:
In one of the new folders, copy the original _main.php. Change the stylesheet to your wishes but do not rename the sylesheet and upload to the new folder. The original _main.php will look for the original stylesheet's name. If this cures the error you are certain your manipulation of _main.php caused the problem.

Good luck

Thank you. Yes that did cure the problem. But I can't see any changes made to<?php it looks exactly the same! There must be something though. Another workround I thought of while I was hoping for a reply was to create subdirectories in the media folder named for each blog and upload individual style.css into each. Then overide the stylesheet.css by checking the box in the backoffice. As a matter of interest, would that have worked?
Thanks again

Afwas wrote:

I suspect your editor screwed the first line (<?php), but that should give another error. For the rest: the description of your actions sound correct.
What you can do is the following:
In one of the new folders, copy the original _main.php. Change the stylesheet to your wishes but do not rename the sylesheet and upload to the new folder. The original _main.php will look for the original stylesheet's name. If this cures the error you are certain your manipulation of _main.php caused the problem.

Good luck

What editor are you using?

You could/can place the css file anywhere you want and even other files that are shared (files that are the same in every folder). But you wouldn't gain anything unless you are extremely tight in diskspace :p .

You can cut the css file in pieces and call all pieces in the _main.php. That way you can have a basic css file that is the same for every skin and a custum css file different for every skin (colours in your example). If you ever need to change something in every skin, you can change the custom css file and distribute that along the various folders.

Good luck

I use AceHTML as an editor. It's never altered anything before but I'll have to keep an eye on it now especially with php files. Since it's all working perfectly nowas in your first suggestion, I'm not going to change it. If it ain't broke etc, etc. Thanks Afwas.

You must note any space (space or line feed) before the first <?php or after the last ?> but that usually gives another error (Headers already sent).
For php files I recommend [url=http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/]Notepad++[/url] as editor.

Happy blogging

I'll have a look at that, thanks