Scheming with Themes

Have been playing around with WebSphere Portal Express 6.0.1.1 and its
themes. I've not done much with themes since Workplace Services Express,
so it's been a fun time,

First thing I'd recommend anyone do is read this redpaper: -

IBM WebSphere Portal Express - Customizing Portal Express for Small to Medium Business

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/redp4316.html

because it's got an excellent chapter (2) on theming, and shows how
easily the out-of-the-box Express theme can be modified if you're merely
looking to add a customer's logo into your portal.

Having done that, I started to dig a little deeper, and got into some of
the underlying Cascading Stylesheets (CSS). This is where I'm a little (
OK, a lot ) rusty, so I had great fun playing with the
default.properties file, which is referred to by many other JSPs.

It's important to remember to switch on dynamic JSP reloading; this
allows you to change things and see the effects of your changes, without
restarting the portal each time.

See: -

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wpdoc/v6r0/topic/com.ibm.wp.exp.doc/wps/dgn_reload.html

for further information.

As with all things, backup, backup, backup and keep a track of your changes - change something, test something.

This section of the Information Center may also help: -

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wpdoc/v6r0/topic/com.ibm.wp.exp.doc/wps/dgn_ptlcst.html

Enjoy !!