What you will need:

Step 1: Install Pidgin
Step 2: Extract the two zip files downloaded earlier to a temporary directory.
Step 3: Copy the folder lib and share from the GTK+ Themes.zip to [Pidgin Installation Directory]\Gtk\ directory (These folders should exist so merge/replace them.)
Step 4: Copy the gtk2_prefs.exe from the GTK Theme Switcher zip file into your [Pidgin Installation Directory]\Gtk\bin\ directory.
Step 5: Find and download a theme – (Here)
Note: Take note of the theme name. You may know of a different site. If you want, post the link in the comments.
Step 6: Extract the theme zip file to [Pidgin Installation Directory]\Gtk\share\themes\
Step 7: You can now run the gtk2_prefs.exe to choose a theme. ([Pidgin Installation Directory]\Gtk\bin\) Select your theme in the new window and use the “Apply for all users” checkbox so that the changes are made to Pidgin’s private GTK+ runtime.
Step 8: Restart or open Pidgin and you should see your new theme.

If you want to customize the theme a bit further you can use a built in plugin to control more aspects of your theme. (Notably Text, Link and different colors across Pidgin)

Step 9: Open the Pidgin Buddy list.
Step 10: At the top menu click Tools\Plugins
Step 11: Scroll down to Pidgin GTK+ Theme Control and check it so it is active.
Step 12: Now with Pidgin GTK+ Theme Control selected click the button Configure Plugin along the bottom of the window.
I’m not going to go in to detail on how to configure the colors

Any feedback you have is 100% encouraged.

UPDATED: If you are using Pidgin 2.7.0 or above see This Article

One problem I have had for awhile was I couldn’t figure out how to apply a theme to Pidgin using GTK+. I have yet to find a suitable guide for this so I decided to write one.

What you will need:

Step 1: Install Pidgin with GTK+
Step 2: Configure the options and plugins (Optional)
Step 3: Find and download a theme – (Here)
Note: Take note of the theme name, you may know of a different site. If you want, post the link in the comments.
Step 4: Extract the zip file to C:\Program Files\Common Files\GTK\2.0\share\themes\
Step 5: Open the start menu and navigate to All Programs\GTK+\Theme Selector
Step 6: In the new window that opened click the name of the theme you downloaded under the Current User List
Note: You can click the theme name under the Global list as well.
Step 7: Restart or open Pidgin and you should see your new theme.

If you want to customize the theme a bit further you can use a built in plugin to control more aspects of your theme. (Notably Text, Link and different colors across Pidgin)

Step 8: Open the Pidgin Buddy list.
Step 9: At the top menu click Tools\Plugins
Step 10: Scroll down to Pidgin GTK+ Theme Control and check it so it is active.
Step 11: Now with Pidgin GTK+ Theme Control selected click the button Configure Plugin along the bottom of the window.
I’m not going to go in to detail on how to configure the colors

Any feedback you have is 100% encouraged.

The latest release of Pidgin (2.7.0) has a borked installer on Windows, it fails to download the (now required) updated to GTK+, and causes issues making it not launch.

My initial reaction to this was to find the latest version of GTK+ and install it, however the official packages from the GTK website were just .zip files, and extracting them were I felt they would work, yeilded the same results.

There’s a quick fix to this issue though, and it’s to download Pidgin’s offline installer, located:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pidgin/files/Pidgin/2.7.0/pidgin-2.7.0-offline.exe/download

That should fix the issue right away.

Just for reference these are the errors you’d encounter during the online/live installer.

Error Downloading the GTK+ Runtime : http://pidgin.im/win32/download_redir.php?version=2.7.0&gtk_version=2.16.6.0&dl_pkg=gtk

While installing, and then the two following after the install “completes”.

The program can’t start because libatk-1.0-0.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.

and

Error loading pidgin.dll. Error: (126) The specified module could not be found.

This probably means that GTK+ can’t be found.

Yesterday, Facebook announced that Facebook Chat now fully supports the XMPP protocol.

This is great news, because we can now all ditch whatever hacked-together methods we were all using to connect to the Facebook Chat service with Pidgin, if you were ever using one. I’ll also cover how to transfer your logs over from the old connection method to the official connection method below.

CLIENT SETUP

1. You’ll first need to go to your Accounts menu, then to Manage Accounts, then choose Add…

2. From here, you need the following settings:

• Protocol: XMPP
• Username: {Your Facebook username, not your email address, to get this you should be able to go to your Facebook homepage, and hover over your “View My Profile” link, it will be http://www.facebook.com/username and you’ll need the username part, and that is all.}
• Domain: chat.facebook.com
• Password: {Your Facebook password}

3. Switch to the Advanced tab, and uncheck “Require SSL/TLS” and check “Allow plaintext auth over unencrypted streams”

4. That’s it, if you were using an old method to connect to Facebook, be sure to remove that account!

LOG TRANSFER

In your Pidgin log directory, usually located at:
%APPDATA%Roaming.purplelogs (Vista/7)
-OR-
%APPDATA%.purplelogs (XP)
unless you set up PURPLEHOME environmental variable (like I did), but if you did this, you should know where they reside… and as for Linux users, you should also know where your log directory is already…

You’ll see some folders in there, with various logs for accounts.
You will have a folder called “facebook” with a “username” directory inside it, and now a new one called “jabber” with a “username@chat.facebook.com” directory inside of it.

In order to transfer the logs, you need to rename all the folders in your “logs/facebook/username” directory from

######
to
u######@chat.facebook.com

and then move them to the “logs/jabber/username@chat.facebook.com” directory.

All your logs should continue to work properly after this.

I use Twitter, and a few IM clients, as well as Facebook and MySpace, and I would LOVE my Twitter posts to automatically sync to ALL my “status updates” and “away messages” and I’ve already accomplishd this with Facebook, but I couldn’t get it to work with anything else yet… So after trying so long to get plugins working for AIM to sync my latest Twitter post as my status message on AIM, I decided to give up, nothing worked, not even slightly. But recently I decided to make the switch to Pidgin, and incase you are unaware, Pidgin is what you SHOULD BE USING instead of AIM, or any other instant messaging client, it runs on the AIM, GTalk, MySpaceIM, Yahoo, Windows Live, Bonjour, ICQ, and IRC, and even more, but I’m actually unaware of what those protocols even are at this point, most people use something listed above. Pidgin runs on a number of platforms, including Windows, Linux, and other UNIX operating systems. This guide is for Windows.

1. Install Pidgin from here.
2. Download and install Strawberry Perl from here.
3. Open a command prompt (Start, Run, CMD) and then enter: perl -MCPAN -e shell
4. Press enter, you should have a CPAN prompt, then enter install XML::XPath and hit enter.
5. Wait for the OK message, and for it to return to the CPAN prompt.
6. Launch Pidgin, go to the Help menu, and choose “About” and scoll to the bottom, near the bottom you should see Perl: Enabled.
7. Download twitter.pl and put it into your Pidgin plugins folder. If you didn’t change then default then it should be C:\Program Files\pidgin\plugins copy it there.
8. Once you have put the file in place, restart Pidgin and go to Tools -> Plugins. There will be a new plugin named “Twitter Status Feed“. Enable it and click on Configure Plugin. Enter your twitter user name in the dialog box that pops up.
9. That should be all, be patient, mine didn’t work right away, walk away for 20 minutes to see if it works, mine sometimes has trouble actually applying the status message, it will download it from the Twitter servers, but sometimes it fails at applying it, but it should automatically try again in a matter of minutes.