Plone skins

Skins are custom graphical appearances which can be applied to certain software and websites in order to suit the different tastes of different users. Such software is referred to as being skinnable, and the process of writing or applying such a skin is called skinning. Applying a skin changes a piece of software's design, including elements such as colours, shapes, layout, and typefaces - some skins merely make the program more aesthetically pleasing while others can rearrange elements of the interface, potentially making the program easier to use.

Being a collection of layers, skins contain through-the-web (TTW) customizable UI components such as standard page headers, footers, and images, as well as functional components such as Python scripts. Each layer often maps to a directory on the file system made visible through the Plone interface.

With this approach, it's easy to customize things like the main logo of your Plone site, the header, the behavior of the search box, or even what the system does when a new member registers. For example, you may require payment to join the site, and thus you may want to customize the join to take the user to a payment screen after submitting a registration. Of course, your site can have multiple skins from which the user can select, or which depend on whether the viewer accesses the site from the corporate intranet or the Internet at large.

Plone skins are composed of templates, scripts and images that extend and/or replace the standard look/behaviour of a Plone site.