Once you have successfully installed and run LispWorks, you can configure it to suit your local conditions and needs, producing an image that is set up the way you want it to be every time you start it up.
There are two levels of configuration: configuring and resaving the image, thereby creating a new image that is exactly as you want it at startup, and configuring certain aspects of LispWorks as it starts up.
These two levels are available for good reason: while some configuration details may be of use to all LispWorks users on your site (for instance, having a particular library built in to the image where before it was only load-on-demand) others may be a matter of personal preference (for instance how many editor windows are allowed on-screen, or the colors of tool windows).
In the first case, you use edited copies of files in the config directory to achieve your aims.
In the second case, you make entries in your initialization file. This is a file read every time LispWorks starts up, and it can contain any valid Common Lisp code. (Most of the configurable settings in LispWorks can be controlled from Common Lisp.) By default the file is called .lispworks and is in your home directory. Your initialization file can be changed via Tools > Preferences... in the LispWorks IDE.
There are four sample configuration files in LispWorks library containing settings you can change in order to configure images:
config/configure.lisp is preloaded into the image before it is shipped. It contains settings governing fundamental issues like where to find the LispWorks runtime folder structure, and so on. You can override these settings in your saved image or in your initialization file. You should read through configure.lisp .
config/siteinit.lisp contains any forms that are appropriate to the whole site but which are to be loaded afresh each time the image is started. The sample siteinit.lisp file distributed with LispWorks contains only the form:
(load-all-patches)
On startup, the image loads siteinit.lisp and your initialization file, in that order. The command line options -siteinit and -init can be used to specify loading of different files or to suppress them altogether. See the example in Saving and testing the configured image, below, and Initializing LispWorks for further details.
private-patches/load.lisp is loaded by load-all-patches, and should contain forms to load any private (named) patches that Lisp Support might send you.
config/a-dot-lispworks.lisp is a sample personal initialization file. You might like to copy this into a file ~/.lispworks in your home directory and edit it to create your own initialization file.
Both configure.lisp and a-dot-lispworks.lisp are preloaded into the image before it is shipped, so if you are happy with the settings in these files, you need not change them. See the example in Saving and testing the configured image, below, and Initializing LispWorks for further details.
LispWorks Release Notes and Installation Guide - 2 Mar 2015