UAG Basic Customization, Part 1

In one of my previous posts I have referenced a couple of good resources on the subject of UAG customization: 

TechNet resource "Customizing Forefront UAG" is a good starting point, and there’s a book that was just published that covers this very topic – “Mastering Microsoft Forefront UAG 2010 Customization” by Erez Ben-Ari.

Much is possible when it comes to customizing and extending UAG, and this is when you would need to refer to those materials mentioned above and to study them carefully; but in some cases only basic customization may be desired, like changing default logon page (say edit the title and add a standard security banner). This post aims to cover those basic changes. So, let's say we want our default logon page to look somewhat like this:

And here are the things we would need to do:

Please, note that all file locations mentioned in this article are installation defaults and may differ from locations you have selected during the installation.

• Under C:\Program Files\Microsoft Forefront Unified Access Gateway\von\InternalSite\Languages\ locate an appropriate language file, in our case en-US.xml, and copy it to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Forefront Unified Access Gateway\von\InternalSite\Languages\CustomUpdate.
• Open en-US.xml file in the \CustomUpdate folder using Notepad and perform the following edits (based on the above sample):
1. <String id="2" _locID="2"> - desired title 
2. <String id="4" _locID="4"> - desired system security message
3. <String id="5" _locID="5"> - desired support information
4. <String id="1" _locID="1"> - desired password self-service information
• To change the default message displayed when users log off modify the following:
• <String id=3" _locID"3"> - desired LogOff message (for example: Thank you for using Company XYZ Remote Access Portal)
• Save the changes in en-US.xml (remember to always use customization file under \CustomUpdate, and not the original one)