In most common scenarios we stumble up on use cases to customize the Web center spaces UI. Is the Spaces UI customizable? What is the extent to which we can customize? How do i customize it? These are some questions that developers/architects normally come across. Well to clear the air, OOTB spaces comes with some default "site templates" and it also gives a flexibility to create custom site templates suiting the organization needs. The site templates concept has been introduced in the latest PS1 release of webcenter and to customize/create the the new site template, we have to leverage the Extend Spaces Project available on OTN. You could download the the project from here. Also there is white paper available on what all can be customized/extended from spaces perspective listed here . There is a specific details outlined on how to create custom site template in the Customizing Site Template white paper. One of the things the white paper high lights is "While you can create new site templates and modify the sample site templates but you cannot modify either of the out-of-the-box site templates ie the default and maximized. So if my need is to either increase the size of header to fit in a bigger logo or introduce couple of extra links on the default/maximized lay out how do i achieve this? All you need to do is customize the OOTB shell (shell-config.xml).
1. Copy the shell config's available in the Source Files Directory of the extended spaces unzipped directory into the CustomSite Template Project ExtendWebCenterSpaces\CustomSiteTemplate\custom\oracle\webcenter\webcenterapp\metadata\shell
2. Modify the appropriate shell
3. Deploy the CustomSite Template as ADF Jar
4. ensure you have the profile dependency on the aboproject int he custom webcenter spaces project
5. Deploy the Spaces Extension on the Webcenter Spaces Instance. (Details in the first white paper).

You should see the changes immediately.

eg: In the default shell, i have changed the height from 30 to 60 to increase the header size

height="60">
This is what i get to see :


If you have worked on the R1 release time frame, where you created a custom shell/chrome, how do we make them compatible and make it available in the Spaces PS1 instance?

All you need to do is the following:
1. Copy the custom shell in to the shell directory of the custom site template project
2. Register the shell with WCSiteTemplates.xml available in the same project.
Eg : Yo can add the below entry
pagePath="/oracle/webcenter/webcenterapp/view/templates/MyShellTemplate.jspx"
pageDefPath="/oracle/webcenter/webcenterapp/bindings/pageDefs/oracle_webcenter_webcenterapp_view_templates_WebCenterAppShellTemplatePageDef.xml"
displayName="myShell" chromeLevel="myShell"/>
Note : pagePath - Absolute path of the template JSPX file. This path must be unique.

So you might have to do the following to get your custom chrome working absolutely fine with no problems at all:

1. Create a jspx page, say /custom/mysite/SiteTemplate.jspx
2. Include the the default jspx in the new site template like following

SiteTemplate.jspx
------------------

3. Add the newly created site template in the WCSiteTemplate.xml file like following -

pagePath="/custom/mysite/SiteTemplate.jspx"
pageDefPath="/oracle/webcenter/webcenterapp/bindings/pageDefs/oracle_webcenter_webcenterapp_view_templates_WebCenterAppShellTemplatePageDef.xml"
displayName="myShell" chromeLevel="myShell"/>