Site "Skins"

[mediadiva]

I am trying to figure out how to do the following:

I have a site with 3 differnt "skins" or 3 different look and feels, most just color changes. I believe all of it can be accomplished via a style sheet, though there is a flash movie on the home page and I am not sure if I can link to a flash movie inside a style sheet.

The only other images that need to change are the nav bar files which I control in the CSS and a form button which I think I can call from the CSS as well.

So a user would come to the site and they would need to randomly get one of 3 possible style sheets, the user would then need to some how continue to use that style sheet as they click through the site. If they were to type in "www.thesamesite.com" to get back to home while in the middle of the site i would prowant it loaded a differnt skin, but when they are clicking around I would want it to use the same style sheet.

So if they came back to the site or re-typed in the domain that should reset the random thing again so they will get another color scheme or maybe the same one (one of the 3).

Does anyone know how I can do this??

[BuzzLY]

Use cookies. When they hit the home page, it picks a random css file, and sets an appropriate value in the cookie. The rest of the site uses that cookie to determine which CSS file to use.

Needless to say, you will have to use javascript to select the CSS file. You will not be able to use PHP includes.

[mediadiva]

Thanks.

Do you know of any good sites with tutorials for cookies like that?

I have not used cookies before but I was thinking someone would mention that as a solution.

[BuzzLY]

An Introduction to Cookies on webmonkey.com
Using cookies in PHP from php.net
Cookies in PHP Explained from planet-source-code.com

That should get you started. Read them in order -- the first on introduces cookies, and the last two show you how to use them in PHP. Good Luck!

For more, simply do a Google search for "PHP cookie tutorial".

[mediadiva]

yeah I was confused.. cause when i searched for just cookie stuff I get a bunch of perl stuff, so none of my searches gave me anything. I tried webmonkey search and also didn't get anything.

Thanks a bunch!!

[mediadiva]

maybe I should just use javascript because my site isn't in PHP at the moment, so that way I don't have to use php to run my site.