Creating and Deploying a Theme in sharepoint site

Task 1 – Adding a new theme

1. Add a new folder underneath the Templates folder called THEMES.

2. Inside the THEMES folder, add a new folder called SPHOLS.

3. Copy newBrand.css from the NewBrand folder to the SPHOLS folder and rename it to theme.css.

4. Right click on the SPHOLS template folder and select Add | New Item.

5. Select the Visual C# Project Items category. Select Text File and name the file SPHOLS.INF.

6. Click Add.

7. Browse to the SharePoint 12 folder (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12) and drill down to the TEMPLATE\THEMES\SIMPLE folder.

8. Locate the SIMPLE.INF file. Open the file in NotePad and copy the text from the file and paste it into your SPHOLS.INF file.

9. Change anywhere in the file where the original theme is referenced to SPHOLS.

10. Copy the image thSPHOLS.gif from the Resources folder and paste this into the Templates\IMAGES folder in the Solution Explorer. This is a Preview image of the Theme that SharePoint will display to the user when selecting the Theme.

The final solution should look like the following image.

Task 2 – Deploy and Test

1. Browse to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033\SPTHEMES.XML.

2. Open SPTHEMES.XML in NotePad or Visual Studion.

3. At the bottom of the file add a new node. Add the following to the end of the node:

SPHOLS

SharePoint Hands-On Labs

A glorious theme created for the SharePoint Hands-On Labs.

images/SPHOLS/thSPHOLS.gif

4. Save the changes to SPTHEMES.XML.

Return to the web browser and refresh the Site Theme page. You should now see the Theme listed with a preview image.

1. Select the SPHOL theme and click Apply.

2. The Site Settings page will be displayed, this time with the new theme applied.

1. In Internet Explorer view the source of this page by right clicking and selecting View Source. At the top of the source you will see elements for the various style sheets:

Note the ordering the style sheets applied. The last css links if for the new theme. When applied to a site, the theme is copied to the _themes folder in the selected site. Because it is last it will override the Alternate CSS file that was stapled to the site.