Adding a custom theme to Communities

Community owners can customize the appearance of a community by choosing from a selection of themes that change the colors used in the community. Administrators can modify or add to the selection of default themes provided with Communities by customizing the existing themes, or by defining custom themes and adding them to the Communities configuration file, communities-config.xml.

Note: If you are performing other customizations that apply to all the applications in IBM® Connections, for example, if you are customizing the header and footer used in the product, you might need to alter or customize the themes available in Communities to ensure that they work as expected in your environment. Consider adding themes that match the customizations that you have made in other areas, for example, themes that match your customized header and footer.

To configure community themes to work with your corporate branding and best meet the needs of your organization, consider the following options:

No themes defined. If you remove all the community themes defined in the communities-config.xml file, your corporate branding is applied throughout the IBM Connections applications, and community owners are no longer given the option of choosing a theme when creating or editing a community.
Multiple themes defined. If multiple themes are defined in the communities-config.xml file, community owners can apply one of these themes when creating or editing a community. That theme then takes precedence for that community over any global customizations or branding that have been applied to all the applications.
One theme defined. If the communities-config.xml file contains a single theme, any corporate customizations are applied to pages that are not community-specific, for example, the Public Communities page, and that single theme is applied to all community-specific pages. Because only one theme is available, the option to choose a theme does not display when users are creating or editing a community.

If you customized community themes in an earlier version of IBM Connections, there is no migration path provided for importing your changes into IBM Connections 4 or later. Before upgrading to IBM Connections 4 or later, ensure that you review and make a note of your existing customizations to community themes so you can verify them post-migration and rework if necessary.

Defining a community theme
To define a custom theme for Communities, you typically start by copying an existing theme. The style sheets for Communities are compartmentalized so that the color information is stored separately from the overall structure of the page. This separation makes it easy to change the page's color without disrupting the layout.
Adding a theme to the Communities configuration file
After defining a custom theme, you need to add it to the Communities configuration file, communities-config.xml.
Specifying the name of a custom theme
After adding a custom community theme to the Communities configuration file, specify the name of your new theme by adding a custom string that contains the theme label to IBM Connections.
Removing community themes
If you want to make a specific community theme unavailable to your users, or you want to disable all community themes, you can do so by editing the Communities configuration file, communities-config.xml.
Customizing the new Gen4 theme
Customize the new Gen4 theme in IBM Connections. The Gen4 theme is a packaged theme, available as a catalog offering on Greenhouse, and included by default in IBM Connections 5.0. Once enabled, it can be customized through the Connections customization directory.

Parent topic: Customizing

Related concepts:

Administering Communities

Making extensive color and style changes