It’s really funny how different Jim and I are in certain “admin” ways. Aesthetics are not very important to him. He will laugh that every screen could be white background with black text and he would be happy. For me, I need an infusion of color and design. Granted, I tend to be a purist in that regard–I don’t like design that is overly fancy. However, color is very important. This seems obvious for a main site, since your visitors will see it. But what about the backend, the admin screens that nobody sees? I realize there is not a real need to have them look good, but I find a great benefit in having skinned admin screens. I often use the same programs on several sites and that means that I have several instances of the same admin screen. If I am working on multiple sites at once, that can get confusing and you can end up posting a change to one site when you meant it for another. I have to admit, Wordpress doesn’t allow skinned admins, but they do have the name of the site you are working on in big letters in a header at the top of the admin, so that helps. Still, I wouldn’t mind having a bit of color to that control panel either.

Funny thing is, I have taken to manually skinning many of the admin panels for the progrms I work on. At first, Jim thought I was crazy for doing it, until he started to see the results…and practicality. As with me, having the different admins skinned to coincide with the respective website, he could see at a glance where he was working. That is particularly helpful for him, since he is known to have 20-30 tabs open at one time (no joke).

It was a bit of a wrangle to get this module done for Phorum. It required actual coding changes by the Phorum team, but they were really great about it and worked with Jim to get it done (even though it will probably be tweaked in the future). The necessary changes were incorporated into the 5.2.12 update and then Jim was able to release the module.

This module only affects the Admin screens. It does not use templates, per se, but rather skin files which are included in the module. I have to admit, the screens turned out pretty sharp. Below is a screenshot of the “Oynx” skin. There are 7 others included in the module. Click on the image for a larger version.

You can download the module from the Phorum website HERE.