The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

How To Change The VR Logo To Your OWN



Ok, I'll try to make this as simple as possible, it's going to be rather lengthy so work with me here.



The first thing you need to do is go to the SKIN MANAGER.



Once there, you will need to choose the skin that you want to work with. I will use the VR Classic Red, since I'm sort of partial to that.



You need to make sure you have a program like WINRAR installed on your computer to open the files you download from VR to edit for your profile. You can get a free program here and this needs to be done before you download skin files.



Download And Install Winrar



Once you get the window asking you to what to do, choose to RUN the program Winrar. Just use the default installation options and you're good to go.



Scroll down and DOWNLOAD the VR Classic Red (or your preference) by clicking on it, a window will pop up asking what you want to do with this file. I'd suggest OPENING it. Once done downloading, Winrar will ask you what to do. You will need to OPEN it, OR EXTRACT it to someplace on your hard drive. You can use the ROOT or C: if you want to. When you open it, you will have a new directory on your hard drive called VR Classic Red





Now you need to make your logo. If you are cool with graphics software, then make your own graphic any way you want it. The important thing here is to make sure that the graphic you make is no bigger then 450 X 100 pixels in size. Larger or smaller will cause your layout to muck up.



If you are not good with graphics, then I suggest trying bannersketch.com which you can find here:



Bannersketch Banner Generator



Be sure to set the custom width to 450 and the custom height to 100.



Once you get the banner done, you need to save it. Have it emailed to you at your email address. The site will save it, but, it's easier to email it and then save the attachment.



The important thing to do when SAVING IT TO YOUR COMPUTER is to SAVE IT TO the directory where you downloaded your VR Classic Red skin.





If EMAILING IT from Bannersketch, then:



Choose SAVE TO or SAVE ATTACHMENT AS, then navigate to the VR Classic Red directory and look for the file vr_top_logo.gif. Double click on this file and it will ask you DO YOU WANT TO OVERWRITE/REPLACE this file. SAY YES OR SAVE.



If using a graphic program, then save it as a .gif file to the VR Red Classic directory as vr_top_logo.gif (you'll see it in the directory)



Now you've got your new graphic saved and you are ready to upload the entire skin.



This will be the difficult part. I myself have my own domain name, so it's easy. You can use photobucket, or VR, but if you use VR all the graphics will show up at the bottom of your profile and cause extra time to download your pro when someone looks at it, and it clutters up the profile, just my opinion. I'd suggest finding a FREE WEB host, so you can upload the skins to that.



This part you have to figure out on your own. You can either use the webhosts control panel or you can use a program like FILEZILLA which is an FTP Program to upload your skin.



I uploaded my skin to a directory on my domain called vamp. So I have a sub directory to keep my files separate.



Once you have them uploaded, then you need to go back to SKIN MANAGER and CREATE A NEW SKIN.



Under Create A New Skin.

Use the Drop Down Menu, and choose VR Classic Red

Give It A name, I chose: Personalized VR Red

Type the Path to you css file:

http://www.kttn.com/vamp/VR Red Skin/vr_classic_red.css

Type the Path to your graphics file:

http://www.kttn.com/vamp/VR Red Skin/



Notice that in the CSS path, I did include the actual name of the css file. If you don't it won't work.



Also note, that in the path to the graphics I had to include a / (or trailing slash) at the end of the directory name.



Click submit and you should be good to go. Please note you can see that my domain name (kttn.com) is in the path, as that's where I uploaded my files. You can see the domain name, my subdirectory and the VR skin directory.





One thing you need to do to finish up your personal logo.



Go to EDIT YOUR PROFILE



At the Bottom where it says FORCED LAYOUT



Leave EVERYTHING BLANK but the GRAPHICS PATH.



There, put in the same graphics path you used earlier when setting up the style sheets and graphics path.



It should read something like



http://www.kttn.com/vamp/VR Classic Red/



I hope this helps you, and doesn't confuse you. Comments good or bad are welcome. Sorry this was so long, just trying to make this easy.