I am beginning to do themes (master pages) for some SharePoint sites, so here is part 1 of an infinite number of parts (because of how difficult theming SP is) of “Theming SharePoint.”

Assumptions:

• Theming will be done in several ways.
• Any advanced theming will include modifying core template pages.
• The amount of modification is directly related to the number of work arounds needed.
• This is going to suck.

Initial Steps

1. Copy default.master from main site catalog directory. Rename and open.
2. Erase everything.
3. Open default.master in new window.
4. Add each individual part, one by one to the page without any layouts.
   1. I started with the header, copy pretty much everything over.
   2. Remove all table tags and __designer: attributes.
   3. Remove all div, p, b, and style tags.

After doing this, you should have a horrible looking page with all the content on it. The important piece here is to get the content working so it is possible to figure out what place holders do what. Next post will be about layouts, the CSS hacks and more.

Update (18:25): Added more detail to the last step. Basically strip everything but the place holders and the controls inside of them.