You can customize Plone by changing settings through the web (TTW) in the ZMI (Zope Management Interface), or by making changes to an installable filesystem product. TTW changes are hard to back up, hard to share, hard to repeat, and generally tough to work with. In Plone 3, the recommended method of theme development is on the filesystem, but we'll look at how you can make some quick-and-dirty changes TTW if needed, and also cover briefly how to bring those changes back out to the filesystem.
In this chapter, we step through how to make our Zope instance recognize our theme product, then make minor manual adjustments to a Plone site through the ZMI. Next, we learn how to get the same changes into our filesystem product by using GenericSetup profiles and other tools.
Specifically, this chapter involves a tour of how to activate a theme and how to use skin layers and non-Zope 3 elements to affect the look and feel of your site. The lessons...