The first change I made was to add the following in order to remove the gray box around the title on the title page – I think it works properly:

\setbeamercolor{titlelike}{parent=structure,fg=white}

Thanks again!!!

My only question is, how to add a header or sidebar to show the table of content?

I am going to have a dissertation defense. I figured for long presentations, it’s better to let people know which section it has been through.

Thanks!

Getting the block environment to work is simply a matter of changing the colors by adding the following to the style file:

\setbeamercolor{block title}{parent=normal text, bg=gray}
\setbeamercolor{block body}{parent=normal text, use=block title,bg=block title.bg!10!black}

In this example, the parent causes the text to look like the normal text (e.g. white in this theme) and a gray background for the block title, where the block body is mixed with the block title background (10%) and black(90%). Note that the parent doesn’t have to be used, it just inherits from the parent, can also set fg and bg explicitly.

As for changing the coloring of the table of contents, I used the following in the style file to make the main sections a bit lighter and stand out better:

\setbeamercolor{section in toc}{use=structure,parent=structure,fg=structure.fg!50}


\useframetitletemplate{%
\vspace{.5 cm}
\hspace{-.5 cm}
\insertframetitle
}