Category: SharePoint

  • How to Create Sharepoint Theme

    How to Create Sharepoint Theme

    As a product that puts you on the web easily, Sharepoint provides customization to the nth level. Here, I am just mentioning one way I found out to do so.

    Custom Templates: This thought came to my mind after I saw the Christmas Template done by Brightstarr. The themes can be defined as “the face of the website or a web application that adopts to certain values”.

    Themes help us to select a look and feel for a particular web page by changing its colors and images used for designing. Technically, changing theme is just adapting to a new Style Sheet and imagery.

    To create a new theme, copy an existing theme from the themes directory into your development machine. Incase you don’t know where you can find it; look at the following directory on your Sharepoint Server.

    C:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft SharedWeb Server Extensions12TEMPLATETHEMES

    Use either Adobe Dreamweaver or other CSS editors and do the necessary changes on the style sheet you want to see on the webpage.

    You would find two or three CSS files apart from all the images or may be one CSS files. All you need to do is find the correct Class name used in the Source Code and match it on the CSS. Do the changes required, test it. You are done.

    There is a INI file which stores information about the creation and version number which is helpful. You can choose to edit the same in the following manner. Make sure you do not change anything else than Version, Title.

    [info]
    title=NewStyleSheetOfCompany
    codepage=65001
    version=1.00
    format=1.00
    readonly=true
    refcount=0

    If you want to do testing, take a view source of the Sharepoint site and save it to your development machine. You can either add a <base href=”” /> to this page or change all the URLs to point at your development machine where you have stored the CSS and Images.

    Once you are done with doing the changes on CSS and Imagery, its time to put it on its way.

    Edit the C:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft Sharedweb server extensions12TEMPLATELAYOUTS1033SPTHEMES.XML file and add your theme in the following manner.

    <Templates>
    <TemplateID>TheDirectoryName</TemplateID>
    <DisplayName>Theme Name</DisplayName>
    <Description> Description of the theme</Description>
    <Thumbnail>images/themethumbnail.jpg</Thumbnail>
    <Preview>images/themepreview.jpg</Preview>
    </Templates>

    Access the Images folder here and put your Thumbnail and Preview images here.
    > C:Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft Sharedweb server extensions12TEMPLATEIMAGES

    Reset IIS and Bingo! You would be able to select the new theme from Site Settings of your Sharepoint Site.

  • Sharepoint: Christmas Wishing Application

    Sharepoint: Christmas Wishing Application

    I had a wired Idea to wish people on Christmas. Normally, I send image greeting cards to my friends and colleagues. But that I am doing now for years. I wanted to do something different. Sending e-Cards was other option. But it is more or less the same.

    Then an Idea struck me. I am not too sure that this kind of application is even available or you all will like it. Nonetheless, its here…

    The idea is to have wishes for your colleagues, to be able to wish people online, on record with no involvement of email (except for sharing the URL, ofcourse.)

    I used this beautiful Christmas Theme readily available from Brightstarr on their website. http://www.brightstarr.co.uk/SiteCollectionDocuments/Its%20Christmas.zip

    I created a Blank Sharepoint site with Custom List.

    Me and my colleagues created a web part solution file to show a random online wishing list. The users can visit the website and click opens a form which has fields like:

    Your Name:

    Who you want to wish:

    The Occasion: New Year or Xmas

    Your personal wish:

    After he puts these details in and submits the form, the data is stored in the Sharepoint List.

    The important part is to create a web part that displays these entries in a list and to create each entry formatted in a table, while it keeps scrolling.

    The table looked something like this which is constantly scrolling.

    Image based on the user selection. For example, Xmas Image if the user selected to wish his colleague on Christmas.

    		Person 1 wishes person 2, a Merry Christmas
    Personal MessageDude, when we are launching this application! Merry Christmas

    Steps Taken:

    1. Created a Custom list named Categories with three columns:WishName: Xmas or New YearWishDescription: a merry Christmas or a Happy New Year (text as is)Imagepath: (textbox) used to pull the url and put it as a back ground image of the TD in the auto scrolling layer.
    2. Then Created a Custom List named Wishing Bag, with four columns as mentioned above.Your Name: Text Box
      Who you want to wish: Text Box
      The Occasion: Data input from Categories list > WishName field
      Your Personal wish: Text Area.
    3. Creating the web partWith this created, I would share the logic with which the web part is created.
      Image URL is picked up from the Categories list from the column > ImagePath

      This is decided basis which $WishName$ the user has choosen.

      		Person 1 wishes person 2, a Merry Christmas

      The Person 1 is taken from the Wishing Bag list column $Your Name$

      The Person 2 is taken from the Wishing Bag list column $Who you want to wish$

      “wishes” is hard coded in the code

      A merry Christmas is taken from the Categories column $WishDescription$.

      Since the image on the left shows the correct $WishName$, it is easy to take the description from Categories list.

      Personal MessageDude, when we are launching this application! Merry Christmas

      Personal message take from the $Your Personal wish$ column.

    4. Deploying this webpart is the fourth step.
    5. Post that, you will need to import this webpart to the page.