If you use SSH at all you know how ugly the shell can be without customization. Having a nice colored theme for your shell makes working on your server that much more enjoyable and can actually improve it’s usability by giving you good visual clues as to where you are and what you are doing. I use a clean, bright theme for my shell. To change your shell you will first need to edit your “.bashrc” (or your “.profile” if you are on OS X) file:
$ nano ~/.bashrc
Then scroll to the bottom of the file and paste this in:
export PS1='\[\033[02;36m\]\u@\h\[\033[02;33m\] \w \$\[\033[00m\] ' export LS_COLORS='di=01;33'
… and save the file by clicking “F3” and “Enter“ and then “Ctrl + X” to close the file.
Then just reload the file and you should see your new design:
$ . ~/.bashrc
This will give the design a compact attractive look. You can change the values above to whatever you want. See this page for more information.
Hope that helps!