Templates Question
 

Its been said to me that if I go ahead and modify templates to alter the forums layout and look, ie navbar and login details , and im not talking just about CSS that I will loose my changes on the next version update ?

Surely this cant be true ... iv been using SMF for years, and the way it worked, a skin or theme, contained the CSS , images and the raw layout PHP and HTML , which meant no updates would ever touch it , as it was a custom skin .. a single sub directory contained all the CSS, PHP, HTML and images for the theme , which made it extremely simple to backup.

Im assuming vBulletin is roughly the same ... I just bought my license and planned on modifying the layout and forum myself, assuming that a custom skin would do this, although from what im being told it sounds like the forum uses common templates that all skins read from , and changing this is dangerous because any new updates could just overwrite what iv done , basically skins are just CSS? ... please someone tell me this isnt true ?