This next best practice in my top 6 list is definitely a matter of opinion on my part. The best practice revolves around SharePoint themes, and my inability to understand how they can be a benefit to someone. The reason why I struggle to see the value with themes is that every company that I have ever consulted for has always wanted to have their brand consistently applied throughout their entire farm. In their case, themes propose a problem because any end user that has full control anywhere can apply a theme on their site and in effect mess with the company's brand. Now I am fully aware that not all companies, especially small ones, are always terribly nit-picky about their brand. However, I do feel confident that from what I've seen, most are. Most companies desire a consistent and professional experience for their end users. I'm not a usability expert by any means, but my guess is that variations in the look and feel on an intranet cause more confusion than it does excitement and pleasure. Whenever I bring up the concept of themes to various organizations they all almost unanimously ask how to disable them even before I can tell them that it is even an option.
Themes as the Vehicle to branding SharePoint Sites
Who of you out there in SharePoint land actually utilize themes as the vehicle to brand your sites? I don't know of many that do, and I have tried myself but I found it too cumbersome. I've always fell back to customizing a master page, rather than building a custom theme. To me, editing a Master page and using a custom CSS file (through setting the AlternateCssUrl property on a web) seems to work really well and is really intuitive. However, I am open to feedback on the strengths of themes if anyone has any to offer. I suppose the obvious streangh is that if you have a business requirement to have your end users be able to apply a customized "themes", going with themes is the most natural inclination. However, you can still do that with features as I discussed in my second best practice.
Conclusion
That being said, if you utilize themeing as your branding vehicle, you're still stuck with the problem that end users can change your theme. Therefore, my third of ten best practices is that if consistency is important; don't let end users toggle the themes on their SharePoint sites.
The "How"
Because this is a short post, and the "how" is relatively trivial, I figured I should include the steps on how to disable your end user from changing the themes on your sites.
- Within SharePoint Central Administration, under the Application Management tab, click User permissions for Web application within the Application Security Group:
- Scroll down until you see the Site Permission group of permission levels. Uncheck Apply Themes and Borders.
- Click OK. Thereafter, nowhere in that web application can anyone apply a theme. If you have multiple web applications, you'll need to run through this process for each.
Phil