I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.2.3.8. Its available now on the download page.

This release contains bug fixes since the last release, and the 3 new skins I implemented recently. Since these skins are much better looking than most of our existing skins I wanted to go ahead and make a release so people can use them.

I still plan to implement more new skins in the coming weeks.

As always be sure and back everything up before upgrading, read the upgrading tips, and post in the forums if you have any difficulties and I will try to help.

We did not release a new build for Mono, and probably won't do that until Mono 1.2.6 is released.

I just completed another new skin named ticktockpro based on this design by dcarterdesign.

You can see it now on the mojoPortal demo site, and I'll have it in svn trunk later this evening.

That makes 3 new good looking skins this week, and I plan to do more of them in between my other work.

Did you know that you can preview skins with a query string param? So you can see each of the 3 skins I made this week using urls that specify the skin like this:

http://demo.mojoportal.com/?skin=tabular1

http://demo.mojoportal.com/?skin=techmania

http://demo.mojoportal.com/?skin=ticktockpro

I just completed another new skin named techmania using this design by Erwin Aligam. You can see it now on the demo site. Great work Erwin! I will have this one in svn trunk by tonight.

I'm on a roll with implementing new skins now that I've found so many good free designs. This one took a bit longer than the first one. I spent at least 10 hours tweaking things until I was satisfied, but things I learned doing this one may make it go better for other ones.

I'm moving on to do another skin now, it is my mission to have a lot of great looking skins included in mojoPortal. If its bling the people want then the people shall have bling!

I just implemented a new skin today using this design, you can see it now on the demo site. It only took me about 3 and a half hours to implement it. It is in my svn sandbox now and will be in trunk later tonight.

I also got started on another skin using this design, but its not finished yet. Since there are so many good free designs on sites like OpenDesigns.org, OpenWebDesign.org, and OpenSourceTemplates.org, I plan to spend the next week implementing new skins to include in mojoPortal. I'm not a good designer myself but I do have a good understanding of CSS and can usually implement a skin using someone else's design. I've downloaded quite a few designs and am picking ones that I think will show a lot of variety. If anyone wants to suggest designs from one of these sites that they would like to see implented as a mojoPortal skin I'm open to suggestions.

Let me know what you think of the new skin on the demo site, do you like it? Do you think its better looking than the other mojoPortal skins. I do ;-)

A lot of people like tab style menus and they do look nice though you are limited to how many items you can have in a horizontal menu. I implemented this skin so that only top level pages are in the top horizontal tab menu and cild pages beneath those are in a vertical tree menu.

I just discovered (via Francisco's blog) http://www.opendesigns.org/ and http://www.openwebdesign.org/ , a couple of good places to find designs that could be converted to mojoPortal skins. I'm going to look through there and find a few designs to convert myself, but thought I would point out these sites for anyone else interested.

I'm not much of a designer myself but I can usually make a skin pretty easily from existing designs.