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We have a need to FULLY rebrand our SharePoint2013 instance. Fully designed header and footer (on every page), with custom html/js/css body (on the home page).

What's the current recommended approach for 2013? I've read Application Customizers, but heard those are more for Modern Pages and SP2016+. I've read CustomAction and JSLink, but heard those are being deprecated now.

What's Microsoft's current guidance for a FULL rebrand?

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Do it in sharepoint designer.

  • In the root site you find master pages in the catalogues/masterpages folder. I think the default master page is called v4.master.
  • Make a copy of it.
  • In order to test changes to the custom master we need a page to test with. In designer make a new page somewhere and open up that page at the top it will say "~masterurl/default.master" inside an .net control. Change that to point at your custom master page that you copied. So it becomes something like "../../catalogues/masterpages/customMasterPage.master"
  • Now go back to the master page you created and open in designer. Make whatever changes
  • when you save make sure to publish it or only you will be able to see the changes
  • once you have a custom master page the way you like it. You can go to Master Pages in site settings in the root and use that to push your new masterpage to every page in your sharepoint site. (Note that this feature must be enabled by the farm administrator or it will not show up in site settings)

**** DONT CHANGE THE v4.master or whatever your default master page is. You want to be able to revert back to it in case you make a mistake. Mistakes are EASY to make. ****

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  • My understanding was we were not supposed to edit master pages from SP2013 forward because that is how Microsoft updated they're product going forward. Is that not the case? – Robert Jul 6 '17 at 0:18
  • I think you slightly missed interpreted the reason for not editing master pages. Don't directly edit the DEAFULT master pages like v4.master or seattle.master because patches may over write your customizations. Instead make a copy of the master and rename it (v4custom.master). Copies will not be over written. It was never Microsoft's intent to deny us the ability to custom brand our site, and master pages is the way you do that. Trying to link in javascript file and use JQuery to change the appearance would be slow, and like trying to build a spaceship with a toothbrush. :) – Brian Rood Jul 6 '17 at 16:35

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