Making a custom theme available to the users

Follow these steps to make a custom theme available to your users from the Blogs theme field on the Create Blog form.

1. Create a copy of the existing default theme.

   For example, to create a new corporate theme, copy the blog theme directory from...

   WAS_HOME/profiles/profile/installedApps/cellname/Blogs.ear/blogs.war/themes/blog/

   ...to...

   customization_dir/blogs/themes/corporateBlogTheme/

   The customization_dir folder is the default directory in which customized files are stored. This location is defined during installation, and is saved as a WAS variable named...

   CONNECTIONS_CUSTOMIZATION_PATH

   By default, the variable is set to...

   CONNECTIONS_HOME/data/shared/customization

2. Modify or add template files to create the desired look, layout, and content for the theme.

3. Create an image to display as a preview thumbnail so that users can see what the theme looks like from the Create Blog form.

   The naming convention is...

   sm-theme-blog_directory_name.png

   For example, the preview image for the default blog theme is named...

   sm-theme-blog.png

4. Edit the Blogs string resource file...
   com.ibm.lconn.blogs.strings.ui_xx.properties

   ...and add a new string for the name of the new theme:

   1. Add the file...
      com.ibm.lconn.blogs.strings.ui_xx.properties

      ...to...

      customization_dir/strings

   2. Locate the #themes section of the file and enter the theme directory name in the format...
      ventura.theme.yourThemeDirectoryName

      For example...

      ventura.theme.MyTheme=MyTheme

   Add the new theme directory name to the ui.properties file makes the new theme work in English. For international support, edit the ui_language.properties file, where language is the ISO country code associated with the language in which to specify the custom label. For example, to support Chinese, also edit ui_zh.properties.

5. Copy the default style sheet, defaulttheme.css from its location in...
   WAS HOME/profiles/profile/installedApps/cellname/Blogs.ear/blogs.war/roller-ui/styles

   Make any changes to the theme, then save it to the same directory with the name of the new theme:

   myNewThemeName.css

Parent topic:
Customize a blog theme