Hi,

I'm not aware of any skin that changes the appearance of the DNN admin menu. Of course, you can change it by tweaking the CSS files in   DNN. Use your browser code inspector to know which styles you should change and in which files they are. Please note that if you change the standard DNN CSS files, your changes will be likely overwritten when upgrading DNN Platform.

Regards,
Francisco

Ok. So, it seems that the DNN logo displayed on admin/host menu as well as its appearance are not changeable by any skin, unless one tweaks the CSS file.I am guessing that not being able to change this part is a condition of DNN's free license.

Thanks for your answer.

Welcome to the DNN Community Forums!

The background color, or any other styling for the Control Bar has nothing at all to do with the free license. It is simply part of the design of the default that is shipped with DNN, and you are free to change it.

The default appearance of the Control Bar is contained in /admin/ControlPanel/ControlBar.css and you are free to override all of those styles in your theme's css files, in portal.css or some other css files.

For example, if you add
#ControlBar{background:red};
to the skin.css file (it lives in the directory for you skin, which should be something like /portals/_default/skins/tidy, then the background color of the control bar will be red.

My guess is that most skins do not re-style the control bar from the default styles, which is why you always see it as black. But you are free to change it.

Also, Tidy is not a skin that comes "with" DNN, but is a skin that was developed by a third party. I can't recall the name of the standard theme that ships with DNN. Also, I don't recall seeing any theme that changes the styling of the Control Bar.

Thanks Joe, that makes a lot sense. I will try playing around with css.

Joe gives solid advice about the where and how to modify the control panel in pre-9.xx versions of DNN. Please do know that it would be more of a best practice to instead fork and create your own version of the same control panel. There, you would apply your style changes. Once you're done and you install your forked control panel, you can update DNN to use your own control panel in the Host Settings. This would allow you to freely make changes without worrying about DNN dependencies and upgrades overwriting your updates.

Regardless, you should know that all of this work will be for nothing once you upgrade to DNN 9.xx. The control panel is replaced with the persona bar.

And you really should upgrade at your earliest convenience. DNN instances as old as yours are attacked quite regularly and are full of security issues that have since been resolved. Sadly, I've even been seeing an increase in automated attacks recently. I just cleaned one up yesterday. :(

Will, thanks for the advice and especially the one related to security. I'll try upgrading soon. I will look up DNN 9 demo.