Changing the look and feel of Project 2010 – Out of the box

Whilst reading through the search terms people use to find this site, one search keeps turning up again and again – ‘change logo in project server 2010’. So I thought I would write a short post covering how to change the logo, but also highlight a few other ‘out of the box’ ways you can change the look and feel of your Project 2010 instance.

Changing the logo

To change the logo, first make sure you have a logo of the correct size available. Microsoft recommend your logo be no more than 60px by 60px. You can make it bigger, but you’ll see why they recommend that size if you do :).

Once you have a logo, you need to get it onto the server. There are two ways you can do this, either uploading it onto the file system, or much easier, uploading it into a document or picture library on the PWA site itself. As with all images within SharePoint, if you leave the logo on your fileshare or desktop, it will work fine for you, but other users of the PWA site that don’t have access to that location won’t get to see it.

Once the file is uploaded, we need to tell PWA to use it, this is done by selecting Site Actions > Site Settings.

Then select ‘Title, description, and icon’ from the Look and Feel menu.

On the page displayed, you can then change the name of the page, the description and most importantly the logo and any alternate text you want to be displayed to the user when they hover on it.

In the URL field, enter the location of the logo file, either as a relative path on the file system, or the URL of the logo within SharePoint. Click on the ‘Click here to test’ to make sure the location is correct, if it is the logo will be displayed.

Finally on clicking ok, the logo will be replaced and visible on all pages within the Project Server 2010 PWA site. 

Changing the theme

One area of significant improvement in SharePoint 2010 was around Site Themes. In previous version there were a few preconfigured options a user could choose from. In 2010, there still are a number of predefined options, but these can be used as a starting block and further modified to tailor the look and feel of the site to meet your exact requirements.

The site theme screen will allow you to modify attributes such as the colours of areas of the page, heading font and body font.

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Web part zones

The final thing I wanted to touch on was web part zones. Most people forget that the main PWA page is in fact a web part page, so if you choose Site Actions > Edit Page, it is possible to add new web parts onto the page. 

Such items as Content Editor, Image Viewers or Silverlight web part can be added allowing further customisation of the front page.

• Change Logo
• EPM101
• Site Themes