Branding the control panels

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You can customize the look and feel of your customers' users' control panels to suit your preferences or to match your company's branding. This look and feel includes the logo, banner, colors, graphics, and styles used in your customers' users' control panels. You can reload the default settings at any time if necessary.

What you can change

What you cannot change

About branding customer control panels

Your customers cannot change the branding of their top-level control panels. However, the system is designed so that they can override your settings and customize the control panels used by their customers (their resellers, organizations sites and users).

Your branding preferences are applied to reseller, organization site and user control panels only if resellers and organizations sites have not added their own branding preferences. This preserves their ability to brand their customers' control panels.

When you add or change your branding preferences, those preferences are applied as follows:

Control panel

How preferences are applied

Resellers and organizations sites you own

Sites you own

Your changes are always applied immediately.

Resellers and organizations owned by your resellers

Sites owned by your resellers

Your changes are applied only if the reseller has not customized the reseller or organization site control panels.

Users added by organizations sites

Changes are applied only if the organization site administrator or reseller has not customized the user control panel.

Changing the styles used in control panels

To change the colors, text, and general look and feel of control panels, follow these instructions:

Step 1. Download and modify the style sheet

  1. Go to the branding files page.

  2. If the style sheet has not been changed before, click Download Current by the style sheet you want to download. If the style sheet has been modified before and you want to modify the original, click restore default, then click Download Current.

  3. Save this style sheet to your local system, then open the style sheet using your favorite editor.

  4. Notice that the style sheet is empty except for a comment containing a URL. This URL points to the base style sheet for the system. Style sheets you modify and upload are loaded after the base style sheet; they override the base style sheet’s styles.

  5. Open a browser and download the base style sheet:

  6. Using your favorite editor, open the base style sheet, copy the styles you want to override, and paste those styles into a new style sheet.

  7. To determine which styles you want to override, you can save a page from the control panel to use as a source for finding page elements and associated CSS class names.

    To do this, go to a page in the control panel and click Save As from the browser's File menu. This saves a page, such as ISP_Admin.htm, to your local machine. It also saves a folder, such as ISP_Admin_files, with any images or style sheets used to display the page.

    The saved page is rewritten by Internet Explorer when it is saved so that all image and style sheet references point to the files in this new folder. You can open the file in Dreamweaver (or the text or HTML editor of you choice) to determine which styles you want to override.

    Learn more about modifying the style sheet

  8. In your new style sheet, change the styles you copied from the base style sheet as needed.

  9. The base style sheet uses relative-path URL references to images in some styles. If you copied any of these styles to your new style sheet, you need to change them so that the references will be correct when you upload the new style sheet.

    For example, the base style sheet uses the following two relative path image references in the style sheet:

    background-image: url(images/menubar.gif)

    background-image: url(../../images/button_logout.gif);

    These references are relative to $CPBaseDir/common/css/styles/blue c:\program files\ensim\webppliance\common\css\styles\blue  which is the folder where the base style sheet is stored.  ($CPBaseDir by default is c:\program files\Ensim\Ensim Unify\cp). Customized style sheets are stored in a different folder, namely, $CPBaseDir/brandingfiles. c:\program files\ensim\webppliance\brandingfiles.

    For images to display correctly, change the relative path URLs in modified styles as follows:

    For images specified as url(images/), change the URL to ../common/css/styles/blue/images/

    For images specified as url(../../images/), change the URL to ../common/css/images/

  10. Save the new style sheet.

Step 2. Upload the modified style sheet

  1. After you have obtained the styles, modified them, and saved them in a new style sheet, return to the branding files page.

  2. In the Style Sheet section, click Browse next to the reseller, organization site or user text box.

  3. Navigate to the style sheet you modified, then click Open. To keep the current style sheet for a control panel, leave its text box blank.

  4. Click Upload Changes. The style sheet is updated.

  5. To view the changes, log in to the appropriate user control panel. If you do not see the changes, your browser might be using a previously cached version of the style sheet. Refresh your browser's cache to view the changes (in Internet Explorer, press Ctrl while clicking the browser's refresh button).

Changes are not displayed in the control panel that is your primary login.

Change control panel banners

Banners are the graphics that appear at the top of the control panels in the long space to the left or right of the logo space. You can replace the banners in the reseller, organization, site, and user control panels you own with any other image that:

To change the banners:

  1. Go to the branding files page.

  2. In the Banner section, click Browse next to the reseller, organization, site, or user control panel text box, then navigate to the file you want to use for the banner. You can use the same graphic or different graphics for each control panel.

  3. Click Open.

  4. To keep the current banner for any control panel, leave the text box blank.

  5. Click Upload Changes.

  6. The new banner appears in the control panel. To view it, log in to the appropriate user control panel. If you do not see the change, your browser might be using a previously cached version of the banner. Refresh your browser's cache to view the change (in Internet Explorer, press Ctrl while clicking the browser's refresh button).

Changes are not displayed in the control panel that is your primary login.

Add your logo

The logo is the graphic to the left or right of the banner at the top of the control panel. You can replace the default logo with any graphic that:

To upload your logo:

  1. Go to the branding files page.

  2. In the Logo section, click Browse next to the reseller, organization, site, or user control panel text box, then navigate to the file you want to upload. You can use the same graphic or different graphics for each control panel.

  3. Click Open.

  4. Next to Logo Position, choose Left to display the logo in the upper left of the control panel, or choose Right to display the logo in the upper right.

  5. To keep the current logo for any control panel, leave the text box blank.

  6. Click Upload Changes.

The graphic appears in the control panel. To view it, log in to the appropriate user control panel. If you do not see the change, your browser might be using a previously cached version of the logo. Refresh your browser's cache to view the change (in Internet Explorer, press Ctrl while clicking the browser's refresh button).

Changes are not displayed in the control panel that is your primary login.

Reload default settings

You can reload the default style sheets, banners, and logos used in the control panels at any time. If you are the service provider who owns the Ensim Unify system, Ensim Pro server, the defaults are the system's initial settings. If you are a reseller or organization site administrator, the defaults are the settings currently used by your service provider; they might change if your service provider rebrands control panels.

To reload default settings:

Next Setup Guide topic: Adding reseller templates Adding User Accounts Adding site templates