How do I disable themes on a site collection?

Question

I want to disabled themes on a site collection in SharePoint 2010 and am not sure how to go about doing so.

Answer 1

Well, it will depend on a couple details.

If you're wanting to remove the permissions for all your users, you can do the following, via Central Administration.

1. Visit Central Administration > Application Management > Web Applications > Manage Web Applications.
2. Select the Web Application that you want to restrict the themes on.
3. Click on “Permission Policy Level” on the Ribbon.
4. Name the policy, and find the permission “Apply Themes and Borders” and toggle the “Deny” check box.
5. Click save.
6. Click on “User Policy” on the Ribbon.
7. Add the users and groups you want to restrict, and then apply the policy you just created.

Alternatively, if you're wanting to do this programatically depending on if you could write a feature stapler, that disables the feature 'Enhanced Theming', which has the GUID '068bc832-4951-11dc-8314-0800200c9a66', and even remove the managed themes altogether.

I've detailed all this in my blog article on removing/disabling themes, but this should be able to get you started.