Most of us have become accustomed to changing our skin in Ogame. Some however are still using the default skin, it's just a matter of personal preference. This forum has the same ability, however the skins used are only those that we have pre-installed for you. This means you can't use an external skin like you can in Ogame.

Naturally there's going to be some questions, if you're new to skinning you may ask what is a skin and why would I want to do this.

What is a skin? Think of a skin like the literal meaning, the skin that covers your body. Everyone's skin is has a different look, feel, pattern, color, etc. In the computer world you can apply this same example. A skin for a forum or even Ogame, gives a different overall appearance, layout, etc, with out changing the underlying design or concept of its function. Meaning that a Forum is still a Forum and Ogame is still Ogame. All you're doing is changing how it looks.

Why would I do this? Well you may want to do this because you have difficulty reading some of the text, or the colors are too bright or dark. Again it's about personal preferences. What makes things easy and clear to use for one person doesn't mean it is so for the next.

I want to change my skin for the forum, but how? Currently the default skin is called twilightBB. As I said, each skin will have certain attributes that make the skin unique. However, the functionality is still the same. So here's the steps to accomplish this task.

1. User Control Panel In order to change any of the options, you must first access the User Control Panel. In the twilightBB skin, you will use the orange "UCP" button at the top.
2. Where do I go from here Next you'll be given a list of options. Depending on how the layout looks, your list of options may be arranged slightly different, but the same options are present. What you'll want to do is select the option for "Board Preferences". Here you can customize a lot of different things. One of them is the skin for the board, however the forum calls them styles. You should see an option for "My board style". To the right of that, is a drop down list. By default you should see twilightBB listed. If you select the drop down, you'll see a few other skins (styles) listed. Once you have selected a skin, click the "Submit" button at the bottom. You'll get a confirmation message and your skin should change when the board refreshes.

That's it, it's simple really. Once you've changed your skin, just remember that to change it again you just need to go to the User Control Panel. Some skins spell it out completely, while others use the acronym UCP.