Custom theme in SharePoint

1. On the SharePoint Server go to the Themes folder e.g. C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\THEMES

2. Copy one of the theme folders from there and paste it in the same directory and give the folder a unique name, say MyTheme.



3. Find the .inf file in the copied folder, and rename it with the name given to the folder i.e. in this example rename that .inf file with MyTheme.INF

4. Open the .inf file and assign the same name i.e. MyTheme to the title in the [info] section of the file, and in the [titles] section replace the previous names with your new name.



5. There is one theme.css file in that MyTheme folder, open that, delete all the classes from that file and place your own css classes in that file.

6. Open “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033\SPTHEMES.XML” file with notepad



7. Add the following lines under tag

<templates>

    <templateid>MyTheme</templateid>

    <displayname>MyTheme</displayname>

    <description>This is custom theme.</description>

    <thumbnail>images/MyTheme.gif</thumbnail>

    <preview>images/MyTheme.gif</preview>

</templates>

8. Where Template ID must be that of same name as that of the folder.

9. In order to display thumbnail and preview correctly, you will need to capture the screen and save the file in "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\IMAGES" folder with MyTheme.gif name. You can change the .gif file name if you change the thumbnail and preview file names in tag.

10. Do an iisrest for the server to recognize the new theme.

11. Open your SharePoint site and go to the theme page by typing following URL in address bar: _layouts/themeweb.aspx

12. Select the theme and apply it to your site by clicking the Apply button.