SkyBlueCanvas - The Lightweight Blog

One of the most common questions we are asked is how to convert existing or stock HTML templates to work with SkyBlueCanvas. In this article I will guide you, step-by-step, through the process of adapting any existing skin to work with SkyBlueCanvas. This process, once you understand the fundamentals, usually takes about an hour - sometimes even less. In fact, the skin we will use in this tutorial took only 30 minutes.

When I first built SkyBlueCanvas, I was a freelance web designer and developer. For seven years I struggled to make ends meet working on small projects that were not very profitable. I knew there had to be a way for me, and the thousands of other independent web professionals, to make a living working on the limitless number of small projects out there. If you are a freelance designer or developer, you know what I mean.

When you create a new page in SkyBlueCanvas, a menu item is already created for you. In fact, there is not really a menu item to create because the system assumes, by default, that if you have created a page, there should be a menu link for. I mean, how else would anyone find your page if there is not link, right?

Upgrading SkyBlueCanvas is simple because all of the files that are editable are contained in a single directory: /skyblue/data/ When you upgrade to a new version of SkyBlueCanvas, you simply need to make a copy of this directory, install the new version following the instructions on the Installation page, then copy your data file back into /skyblue/data/.

If you have used an earlier release of SkyBlueCanvas and are now upgrading to v1.1 RC1, you have probably noticed that the skins are a bit different. Normally, I would not want to make a change with as much impact on existing users as this one, but the change was really necessary. This article will explain the underlying concepts of the new skin format and the API hooks at your disposal. For users of older versions of SkyBlueCanvas, your existing skins will still work. There are some minor caveats to this that I will explain later on.