SharePoint 2010 Theme disablement

Hi there,

You cannot 'disable' Themes in OOTB SharePoint.

However, you have two alternatives:

1: Heavily restrict access to enabling themes in the first place - there is a permission that allows you to define who should be able to set themes - goto http://yoursharepoin...ts/addrole.aspx and in the Site Permissions section there is "Apply Themes and Borders - Apply a theme or borders to the entire Web site". So you could create a group for those who should be able to set themes and restrict everyone else.

2: Modify the following file and remove all the theme entries - there is a file called C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033\SPTHEMES.XML - open that in notepad and then remove the theme entries leaving only the ones you want to keep (I would keep the DEFAULT one). You want to delete each section starting with <Templates> and ending with </Templates> - note - make sure you have a backup of this file.

Hope this helps

One more point. There is a Microsoft Technet forum dedicated to SharePoint 2010 here: http://social.techne.../sharepoint2010

Cheers

Geoff

In Central Admin (in SP2010), You can define a Permission Policy Level:

Central Admin -> (Application Mgmt -> Web Apps ->) Manage Web Apps
Select the Web App you wish to restrict themes on
Click on "Permission Policy" in the ribbon
Add a Permission Policy Level(link)
Give the permission policy a name ("restricted themes")
Scroll to Site Permissions section to "Apply Themes and Borders" and click "Deny"
Click Save.

Now click "User Policy" in ribbon.
Add users (or groups) and add the users you want to restrict, and use the new perm policy level you just created.

Done. At the web app level. (more than the site collection level).

Notes: When a site collection admin tries to preview or apply a theme, they get an semi-ugly error.