Section 3.8. Modifying Themes

3.8. Modifying Themes

Themes control the color scheme and backgrounds used by SharePoint sites. You can change a site's theme by selecting Site Settings Apply theme to site. The themes that appear on the Apply Theme page come from the .\TEMPLATES\THEMES folder on the SharePoint server. Figure 3-15 illustrates the structure of the theme definitions.

To change a theme:

1. Edit the files in the theme's folder.

2. Restart SharePoint by running iisreset.exe .

Changes to a theme automatically appear in sites based on the theme after SharePoint restarts.

To create a new, custom theme based on an existing theme:

1. Copy and rename a theme's folder in .\TEMPLATES\THEMES .

2. Edit the files in the new theme folder.

3. Rename and edit the . inf file in the theme folder to match the theme's name .

4. Edit the file SPTHEMES.xml in the \TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033 folder. This file loads the theme definitions in SharePoint.

animal 3-15. Viewing themes on the server

The theme's . inf file contains the theme's title and localized name displayed for different languages, as shown here:

 [info]     title=  NewTheme  codepage=65001     version=3.00     format=2.00     readonly=true     refcount=0     [titles]     1031=Eis     ... 

The SPTHEMES.xml file tells SharePoint where to find the theme definitions. For example, the following snippet adds NewTheme (based on Ice) to the list of available themes:

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>     <SPThemes xmlns="http://tempuri.org/SPThemes.xsd">         ...  <Templates>             <TemplateID>newtheme</TemplateID>             <DisplayName>New Theme</DisplayName>             <Description>Demo theme</Description>             <Thumbnail>../images/thice.png</Thumbnail>             <Preview>../images/thice.gif</Preview>         </Templates>  </SPThemes> 

You don't have to restart SharePoint for the new theme to be available.