Failed Web Part

It is not uncommon for someone to either add a broken web part to a page or a content editor web part with java script that disables SharePoint functionality.

If you need to remove a web part and your 'Site Actions' button is visible but not responding, simply add '?contents=1' to the end of your URL.

This will bring up the 'Web Part Page Maintenance'. From here you will be able to right the wrong and get your site working again.

SharePoint User Group Now In Colorado Springs, CO

There is a new SharePoint User Group for the Colorado Springs, CO area. The first user group meeting will be on September 2, 2008.

The meetings will be held on the first Tuesday of every month. The LeaderQuest is allowing us to hold the meetings in their building. They are located at

2790 N Academy Blvd
Suite 238
Colorado Springs, CO 80917

for more information, please contact Shannon Bray @ shannon.bray@qortex.com .

Microsoft TechNet: SharePoint Forums

TechNet has recently migrated their forums over. The process was a little slower than they would have liked, but everything seems to be running smooth now.

I would recommend that you visit the SharePoint forums. They have some really great resources monitoring these threads to help you get answers to your questions.

You can check out the SharePoint forums at http://forums.technet.microsoft.com/en-US/tag/sharepoint/.

Hope to see you there.

Top Navigation Gone Wild

I was setting up a new MOSS 2007 site yesterday. The implementation did not require all of the publishing features but I was explainiing what many of the features did. It turns out that if you turn enable the Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure feature on the top-level site you will get the following issues:


• The name of the tab that represents the top-level site changes. For example, the name of the tab changes from Home to the name that you specified as the title of the top-level site.

• When you click the tab that represents a subsite on the top link bar, you connect to the subsite as expected. However, the tab for the subsite is not selected. Instead, the tab for the top-level site remains selected.

I didn't know exactly what I did at first. After a little research, I found an article entitled....

The tab on the top link bar is not selected when you connect to a subsite after you enable the Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure feature in SharePoint Server 2007

It is located @ http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925974 that shed some light on the topic.

So I am passing the information on incase you too do the same thing. It would be interesting to know why this happens. If anyone knows, I sure would love to hear about it.

Save Site As Template - Missing

I am teaching a class for SharePoint Solutions this week and I demoed how to create a Site Template on a team site.

I was asked how to create a site template on a Publishing site. Saving a publishing site is not supported in MOSS 2007 so no optins exist in the Site Actions to do so.

However, you can turn off the publishing features of a publishing site by going to Site Actions --> Site Settings --> Modify All Site Settings --> Site Administration --> Site Features. Click the Deactivate button for Office Sharepoint Server Publishing.

Now when you go back to the site settings, you will have the option to save the site as a template. When you do so, simply turn the publishing features back on. Also you can turn the publishing feature on on your your new sites after they are created.

You will need to turn on the publishing feature after you create the site if needed. This is a much better alternative to having to create a Team Site just so you can create a template.

Rocky Mountain SharePoint User Group: Exam 70-630

I will be presenting "Understanding the Basics of MOSS Administration: Exam 70-630" at the Rocky Mountain SharePoint User Group on August 19,2008.

In this fast-paced session we'll fast track 30 topics in 60 minutes to help you prepare for the Configuring Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 exam. Upon completion of this session you will understand the key exam topic areas and will understand how to better focus your study efforts.

The meeting will be held at the Microsoft building:

Microsoft Denver Office
7595 Technology Way, Suite 400 (4th floor)
Denver, CO 80237

Rocky Mtn User Group Site

The event will be sponsored by Qortex. Come on by and learn about what you need to know to pass the exam and eat some free food.

Hope to see you there!!!

Upgrading from WSS v2 to v3

There are three ways in which WSS 2.0 can be upgraded to WSS 3.0: an in-place upgrade, a gradual upgrade, and a database migration. In both gradual and in-place upgrades, the original URLs point to the upgraded version of the sites.

TechNet

In-place Upgrade

The in-place upgrade is best suited for upgrading single-farm deployments. In this method all the Microsoft SharePoint sites are upgraded at one time.



Gradual Upgrade

The gradual upgrade method is generally used for larger deployments, and in this method, one or more site collections can be upgraded at the same time.

The following steps are performed during the gradual upgrade process:

· WSS 3.0 is installed on the first front-end Web server in the farm.

· A WSS 3.0 Web application is created by the upgrade process. The database stores the configuration data for WSS 3.0. The Central Admin site is also created.

· A new configuration database is created by the process. This database stores the configuration data for WSS 3.0. The new database is created by copying the configuration data from WSS 2.0 configuration database.

· A virtual server is selected for upgrading by the administrator. The administrator also specifies the target Web application. A target Web application is created by the upgrade process, and any Web Parts that were deployed on the WSS .20 virtual server are added to the new Web application.

· A temporary content database is created by the upgrade process for every content database that existed in WSS 2.0. The site list is copied from WSS 2.0 into the new environment by the upgrade process. The site collections that need to be upgraded are selected by the administrator. The data for the selected sites is copied into the temporary content database. The3 sites are then upgraded in the temporary content database. During the time when the site is being copied into the temporary content database, the site becomes unavailable.

· Data is moved to the WSS 3.0 content database after the content has been upgraded and the temporary content database is deleted.

· When the upgrade process is completed, both WSS 2.0 and WSS 3.0 are available and running. The administrator confirms that the upgrade is complete. If WSS 2.0 is no longer required, the administrator can uninstall WSS 2.0.


The WSS 3.0 version uses the old URL. The WSS 2.0 version changes the URL so that a domain name that is supplied by the administrator during the upgrade process. All requests are automatically redirected to the newly created temporary URL during the upgrade process.

The hard-coded links in the site or documents may not work properly. The links to a data location, such as a SharePoint list in Microsoft Office InfoPath forms, may not work while the users are accessing the original previous version of the sites during the upgrade process. Once the upgrade process is complete, the redirect no longer occurs.