I understand your point. I will probably want more when I've grown out of the Neanderthal stage.

Thanks, Novlang1984 - I did download the file and it unzipped fine.
The only issue is this is not a theme file. I'm reluctant to create modules/.... area as instructed because I'm a newbie to Xoops and don't know how to shift gears yet.

I've just spent several hours working my way out of a major corruption cause by installing a plugin. (nothing to do with EVU)

I was looking for a simpler Admin theme, as the current default presents so many versions of the same thing that I'm in mouse-click overload. That was the reason for exploring EVU.
Are there other Admin themes that will accomplish this?

I've downloaded the admin theme EVU from Xoops.Themes.Backoffice area from your website and two UNZIP tools claim EVU is not an archive file. I repeated the download and same results. The two tools were 7Zip and jZip. -Dennis

The issue is resolved. Apparently applying the correct file permissions just after the unzip stage did not fully take and I was still dealing with directories that were read only. Lesson learned is always check. Assuming something is the mother of all screw ups.
Also, coming recently from trying to understand Joomla and Drupal, my initial impression is Xoops Admin presents a much clearly picture.
thanks

I'm new to Xoops and already struggling. I'm running an xampplite localhost setup and downloaded Xoops 2.5. All that went well and basic core Xoops is functional. I've downloaded several themes, unzipped them and placed them in the ./themes area. Now the problem, they do not show up in the "system/preferences" page, nor anywhere else. I went to the themes area and replicated "default" directory with a "mytheme" directory, and it fails to show also. I'm relatively new to CMS frameworks, and have tested Drupal7 and Joomla. I'm still a neanderthal when it comes to those systems, but their theme switch-over was seamless. Clearly, I'm missing something with Xoops. I've purchased the Xoops book from Packt Publishing, and though interesting - all the Theme examples don't work cause the links listed in the book are broken. Can someone help this dead horse?