This is our second edition of Master Page Monday’s. In our first edition, we shared some links that were useful to the SharePoint branding community. Today, we are going to provide a tip that will allow you to brand not just your default.master or application.master but also your admin.master. The admin.master takes care of the look and feel for the Central Administration page.

If you would like to customize the admin.master page then its simply a matter of copying and pasting your branded application.master file into the ADMIN directory. Here are the steps:

1. Browse to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\ADMIN
2. Rename admin.master to admin.default.master or whatever else you’d like. Simply because we’d like to keep a backup of the original.
3. Browse to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS
4. Copy the branded/customized application.master file from this directory
5. Browse back to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\ADMIN
6. Paste the application.master file to this directory
7. Rename application.master to admin.master

This gives you the ability to have all SharePoint related pages customized, including the Central Administration page.

What are your thoughts on this procedure? Do you think this procedure is the right approach / best practice?