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I’m deploying OpenStack “Essex” on Ubuntu Server 12.04, and have the openstack-dashboard package installed to provide the web-based “Horizon” GUI component newly added for the Essex release. Canonical also provides an openstack-dashboard-ubuntu-theme package that brands the Python-based Django GUI. Despite that the last major Canonical-maintained packages based on the OpenStack “Diablo” release in Ubuntu 11.10 did not include an administrative GUI, Horizon — as a standalone component — has been very stable for a mainstream debut. In the future, though, I’d like to see a quick and easy way to change the default branding to use your own logo, colors, and titles using only the GUI’s administrative screens.

The horizon documents briefly mention branding customization to give you a head start, but you probably want more specific steps. Here’s my custom-branded Horizon dashboard with custom colors, logo, and site title:

Once you know where to make the appropriate changes, it’s super simple. Step-by-step:

1. Create a graphical logo with a transparent background. The text “TGen Cloud” in this example is actually rendered via .png files of multiple sizes I created with a graphics program. I used a 200×27 for the logged-in banner graphic, and 365×50 for the login screen graphic.
2. Set the HTML title (shown at the top of the browser window) by adding the following line to /etc/openstack-dashboard/local_settings.py

   SITE_BRANDING = "Example, Inc. Cloud"

3. Upload your new graphic files to:

   /usr/share/openstack-dashboard/openstack_dashboard/static/dashboard/img/

4. Create a new CSS stylesheet — we’ll call ours custom.css — in the directory:

   /usr/share/openstack-dashboard/openstack_dashboard/static/dashboard/css/

5. Edit your CSS file using the following as a starting point for customization, which simply overrides the Ubuntu customizations made in the ubuntu.css file. Change the colors and image file names as appropriate, though the relative directory paths should be the same.

   /*
   * New theme colors for dashboard that override the defaults:
   *  dark blue: #355796 / rgb(53, 87, 150)
   *  light blue: #BAD3E1 / rgb(186, 211, 225)
   *
   * By Preston Lee <plee@tgen.org>
   */
   h1.brand {
   background: #355796 repeat-x top left;
   border-bottom: 2px solid #BAD3E1;
   }
   
   h1.brand a {
   background: url(../img/my_cloud_logo_small.png) top left no-repeat;
   }
   
   #splash .login {
   background: #355796 url(../img/my_cloud_logo_medium.png) no-repeat center 35px;
   }
   
   #splash .login .modal-header {
   border-top: 1px solid #BAD3E1;
   }
   
   .btn-primary {
   background-image: none !important;
   background-color: #355796 !important;
   border: none !important;
   box-shadow: none;
   }
   
   .btn-primary:hover,
   .btn-primary:active {
   border: none;
   box-shadow: none;
   background-color: #BAD3E1 !important;
   text-decoration: none;
   }

6. Open the following HTML template in an editor:

   /usr/share/openstack-dashboard/openstack_dashboard/templates/_stylesheets.html

7. Add a line to include your new stylesheet: (I’ve highlighted the new line in bold.)

   ...
    <link href='{{ STATIC_URL }}bootstrap/css/bootstrap.min.css' media='screen' rel='stylesheet' />
    <link href='{{ STATIC_URL }}dashboard/css/{% choose_css %}' media='screen' rel='stylesheet' />
    <link href='{{ STATIC_URL }}dashboard/css/custom.css' media='screen' rel='stylesheet' />

   ...

8. Restart apache just for good measure:

    sudo service apache2 restart

9. Reload the dashboard in your browser and fine tune your CSS appropriate.

You’re done!

[ezcc]