.. _styling_quickstart:

Styling a Map
=============

When a new dataset is added to GeoServer the layer for it is usually assigned a very basic style. To properly visualize the data a style specific to that data must be created.

This tutorial walks through the steps to create a new style in GeoServer and provides an introduction to the Styled Layer Descriptor (SLD) styling language.

.. note:: 

   It is assumed that the tutorials :ref:`shapefile_quickstart` and :ref:`postgis_quickstart` have been completed.


Getting started
---------------

Before continuing with this tutorial it is *strongly* recommended that the section :ref:`sld_intro` be first read.

Creating a new style
--------------------