I am trying to create my own powerdot style by adapting one of the standards, as suggested in section 9 of the manual.
I duplicated the file powerdot-paintings.sty and saved as powerdot-mine.sty, and changed the line
\ProvidesPackage{powerdot-paintings}[2005/12/10 v1.1 paintings (TDK,HA)]
to
\ProvidesPackage{powerdot-mine}[first test]
I searched through the file and there were no other lines where 'paintings' appeared (except comments).
I saved this file in the same directory as the original powerdot-paintings.sty file, and separately tried in the same directory as the tex file.
If the command is style=paintings then it runs fine (see example below), swapping to style=mine and the error "1613: Class powerdot Error: unknown style `mine'." is returned.
I am using Texshop on OS X Yosemite. I did note that if I search for the powerdot style file using the command kpsewhich powerdot-paintings.sty it can find the file, but using the same command for powerdot-mine.sty returns no files. I don't understand what that command does, found it on another site when trying to find the location of my powerdot style files - but I suspect that the system can't see my file.
\documentclass[style=mine]{powerdot}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\title{Powerdot Presentation}
\author{Sharelatex}
\date{\today}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
\begin{slide}{Slide Title}
\begin{itemize}
\item This is an item
\item Second item
\item Third item
\end{itemize}
\end{slide}
\end{document}