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.

.dwp vs .webpart

This question has come up a bit so I thought I would make a comment ...


"During the time of adding a new webpart, iam seeing .dwp for some webparts and .webpart for some webparts as extension. What is the difference between these two?"

The differance here is that one is a SharePoint webpart and the other is a .NET web part.

The .dwp is a SharePoint web part. This would be one like the Content Editor.

The .webpart is a .NET framework.

The primary differances are that the SharePoint webparts are built with backwards compatibility and more functionality in the web parts communitcation area. If you needed a web part that worked in WSS 2.0 and WSS 3.0, this would be your guy.

The later is one that most likely originated in Visual Studio.

Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

Microsoft just released an infrastructure update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. It is highly recommended that you apply this update.

Brief Description
The Infrastructure Update for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (KB951695) includes the latest performance updates and fixes for Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.

x86

x64

Free SharePoint E-Learning for Developers

Clinic 5045: Inside Look at Developing with Microsoft® Windows® SharePoint® Services 3.0

In this 2-hour premium clinic you will learn about the rich capabilities that Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 offers to developers. The clinic will focus on Architecture and List Management, Building and Extending Windows SharePoint Sites, and Packaging and Deploying Windows SharePoint services solutions.
Having this knowledge will enable you to determine how to incorporate Windows SharePoint Services into your workspace solution development. Additionally, it will enable you to consider deployment options for your SharePoint solutions.


Clinic 5046: Inside Look at Building and Developing Solutions with Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007


In this 2-hour premium clinic you will learn about the rich capabilities that Office SharePoint Server 2007 offers to developers. The clinic will focus on Fundamentals of Building Solutions with Office SharePoint Server 2007, Building Business Solutions with Office SharePoint Server 2007 and how to Incorporate Office SharePoint Services into Business solutions.

Having this knowledge will enable you to determine how to incorporate Office SharePoint Server 2007 development into your portal-based solution development. Additionally, it will enable you to determine how to integrate Office SharePoint Server within your existing enterprise application infrastructure.

Open Specifications

For those of you who don't get the MSDN Flash, Microsoft is providing open connections to its high-volume products - Windows Vista (including the .NET Framework), Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Server 2007. As a developer, you now have full access to information about protocols, binary file formats, and other specifications for these products that can be used to create solutions.

SharePoint Products and Technologies Protocols Overview

The Next Big Thing: Certify on SharePoint (Worldwide)

The following is from the MCP Flash for July 2008...

Everyone is asking about Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services these days. Consider earning an Application Development or Configuration certification and stand out to organizations looking for expertise in deploying and using this new collaboration technology. Audience: IT professionals and developers who work with Office SharePoint Server or Windows SharePoint Services, or intend to in the near future. This meeting will be offered twice to accommodate worldwide calendars:
•
July 23, 2008, at 7:30 A.M. Pacific Time (What time is this in my region?)
•
July 23, 2008, at 5:00 P.M. Pacific Time (What time is this in my region?)
Mark Your Calendar for Upcoming Live Meetings (Worldwide)
•
System Center and Virtualization Certifications on August 20, 2008, at 7:30 A.M. or 5:00 P.M. Pacific Time
•
SQL Server 2008 Certification on August 27, 2008, at 7:30 A.M. or 5:00 P.M. Pacific Time
Register for Tech·Ed South East Asia and Save 25% on Exams (Worldwide) Register for Microsoft Tech·Ed South East Asia 2008 and get a 25 percent discount on Microsoft Certification exams at the event as well as exclusive Microsoft Learning offers. Bring your MCP card and you will receive an exclusive gift!
Register for SharePoint Server 2007 Conference by August 1 and Receive a Free Book (United States)

Microsoft Press authors Bill English (MVP, MCT) and Ben Curry (MVP) put their expert insights and field-tested best practices into their newest book, SharePoint Server 2007 Best Practices, and will share even more as hosts of a Best Practices Conference in Washington, D.C., September 15-17, 2008. Register by August 1 to receive a free copy of the book!
•
Learn more about the conference.
•
Order your own copy of SharePoint Server 2007 Best Practices.
•
To receive similar news in the future, sign up for the Microsoft Press newsletter.

Remove Quick Launch Bar

I recently created a Site Definition where the client did not want the Quick Launch bar to show up on the landing page but did want it on the rest of the pages.

In side the site definiton project, I opended up the defaul.aspx and added the following two lines of code.

One the opposide, if you want to add Quick launch to pages that do not have them by default, you can remove these two line.

This works great for site definitons. You can also modify pages after the fact but you will need to use SharePoint Designer.

Attaching To Process

Let's say you just spent a ton of time creating the best .DLL in the world. Now you want to see it run in action but there are errors that you can't seem to track down. The best thing to do is test it out using the 'Attach To Process' in Visual Studio.

Here's how it works ...

Drop the .DLL into the _app_bin folder of your Web Applicaiton. The one I am doing this one in is the '80' folder under C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\80.

Make sure you make the appropiate web.config changes so that your web part or code segment is set up correctly. In the case of this example, please refer to the the WSS Navigation post. I added a line to the area.

I then made a refernce in my MasterPage that used the code.

Load your .DLL project inside Visual Studio. Click Debug -> Attach To Process.

Select the W3WP.exe process. If you are running multiple instances of IE, you will see a few of these. So this may be trail and error. I would recommend closing IE and doing an IISReset to make it easier.

Drop a break point on the line of code that you want to investigate.

Refresh the page and click the action you need to fire it. You are now able to step through the code and see what's causing your issue.

Watch Out: Host Header Web Config

Ok, I was adding my WSS Naviagion at a client site. The structure had a site on port 80 and a site at a specific url using a host header. Let's say 'http://MyWSSTest/'. This site was created using port 80 as well.

So SharePoint creates a site under the web applicaiton MyWSSTest80. In side the web applicaiotn is a web.config. I went to implement my navigation by modifying the web.config and got nothing!!!!

In this scenario, I had to modify the web.config in the '80' folder. None of the changes in the 'MyWSSTest80' actaully did anything.

So there you have it. That's my Watch Out for the day. If anyone knows why this is the case, I would love to hear about it.

Modify The WSS MenuProvider

I have gotten a lot of great feedback off of the WSS MenuProvider I posted on my blog. I had a question come in about changing the 'Home' tab in the menu.

After running the test, I did confirm that you can alter the 'Home' tab and then rename the node.Title in code.

The best way to test it to to attach to the process and make sure what you think is happening is truely happening. I will make a post about attaching to a SharePoint process next. While testing this, I also found another interesting issue that some of you may have known about, but it was new to me!!! Cost me a few minutes!!! So I will share that in a second as well. Make sure you check out the Watch Out: Host Header Web Config

WSS Installations

I have just uploaded a video series to WSS Classroom on 'WSS Installations'. The series covers prereqs and the basic, stand alone, and web front end installs. I am currently working on the 'Introduction to the WindowsSharePoint Services 3.0 Platform' series that will be appearing within the next week.

Check out the screen casts @ https://wssclassroom.securespsites.com/default.aspx.

Publishing Subsites and Anonymous Access

I ran across a post the other day that seemed to go ignored for a week or two, so I thought I would post a little something about it here.

Original Post ...

http://forums.microsoft.com/technet/ShowPost.aspx?siteid=17&postid=3560649

When you create a Publishing site in Moss you will need to remember to 'Approve' the content. Most of the time you may get a security error in the case of a master page not being approved. In the case of subsites, you will need to approve them after you create them.

This situation is not really a case of anonymous access. Anyone who is logged in that does not have contributor rights or above will see the same issue.

Verbose Errors in SharePoint ...

This has popped up a few times in the SharePoint forums, so I thought I would pop a solution here...

When you receive an error in SharePoint (WSS or MOSS) you will get the canned 'Runtime Error'. This error is designed to not give out critical information to your users. You can view the real error by following these steps ...

Go into the web.config for this web site. It is typically located in the C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\

You should see several folders here. You need the folder for the port number your site is on. This is often the 80 folder. If you only have two, the 80 and another number, it is definitly the 80. The later would be for your Centeral Admin. There is no need to mess with this one.


Find the web.config and make a copy!!!!! Just incase you make a mistake you don't know how to fix. Name it something like web.backup.


Open the web.config file in notepad


change the following two lines

SafeMode MaxControls="200" CallStack="false" DirectFileDependencies="10" TotalFileDependencies="50" AllowPageLevelTrace="false"

to

SafeMode MaxControls="200" CallStack="true" DirectFileDependencies="10" TotalFileDependencies="50" AllowPageLevelTrace="false"

The "True" will give you the verbose details beyond the simple error codes.

and change ...

customErrors mode="On"

to

customErrors mode="Off"

Save the web.config!!!

Make sure you capitalize just like I did.

Do an IIS reset... re-run your page. You should see the real error.

You should put things back when you are done so that other end users don't see critical error information.

As a developer, this is often one of the first things I do. Errors are part of the development process and you might as well set this early. Do not leave this on for Production sites. Set the "Off" to "RemoteOnly" or "On".