Datasheet

The types of themes that are available in Community Server 2007 and later include the following:
K Site themes
K Blog themes
Both sets of themes are found in the
Themes folder. This is located off the root directory of a Community
Server installation. Inside of the themes directory is a specific folder for containing all of the blog themes
named Blogs. Also inside of the root themes directory are folders for the different site themes. In
Community Server 2007 there are two site themes,
default and leanandgreen.
Later in this book you will learn how to create each of these types of themes. In Chapter 6, you will
learn how to create a custom Blog theme. In Chapter 7 you will learn how to create a custom Site theme.
Both of these chapters will assist you in understanding what is required to create a theme in
Community Server.
SiteUrls and URL Rewriting
A central component to any Community Server site is URL rewriting and the SiteUrls.config file.
Both of these combine to provide very powerful features for your site.
The
SiteUrls.config file contains the entries for the pages on your site. This provides a central loca-
tion for controlling where URLs point to on your site. For example, if you want to change the name of
a page on your site or the folder that it resides in, you can do so by changing a single URL entry in this
file. This prevents a site administrator from having to touch physical page files to update the location
that a link points to.
The SiteUrls.config file also provides data used in URL rewriting. URL rewriting allows for a requested
page to be physically located in a different path than where it appears to be. Whenever you request
http://yoursite.com/default.aspx, you are actually accessing the page at http://yoursite .com/
themes/default/common/home.aspx
. As you can see, URL rewriting is essential for themes to work
correctly.
The URL rewriting feature allows your site to have many different themes and allows it to switch
between them and yet still retain the same URL structure publicly. If you change from the default
theme to the
leanandgreen site theme, then your page files are going to be located at a physically
different location. However, the users accessing the site do not need to type in a different path to use
the different theme.
Chameleon
Chameleon is the name of the new theme engine available in Community Server 2007 and later versions.
It provides many of the topics that are discussed in this book. Prior to Chameleon, there were no
theme.config files to provide dynamic configuration options. Also, there were no controls that pro-
vided the same level of ease for creating powerful themes.
One of the main differences between Community Server 2007 and previous versions in regard to
themes is that the previous versions contained skin files, whereas the current version does not. As
3
Chapter 1: Key Concepts
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