When you create sites programatically they will not show up in the site directory list. I found an article at the website of SPSFAQ with a coding example which will resolve this problem. They got the article from MSD2D. The code is as follows:

//Get reference to the portal
SPSite myPortal = new SPSite("http://localhost);
SPWeb myWeb=portal_site.AllWebs["SiteDirectory"];
SPListCollection myWeblists=myWeb.Lists;

//Get reference to the site directory
SPList siteDir= myWeblists["Sites"];

//Add an new entry
SPListItemCollection listItems = siteDir.Items;
SPListItem item = listItems.Add();

//Assign values to the list columns
item["Title"] = objCommunity.Name;
item["Description"] = objCommunity.Purpose;

//update the new list item
item.Update();

http://www.spsfaq.com/customising.asp?page=8  (SPSFAQ0302106)

Maurice Prather has written a nice article about the recommended way of validating WebPart properties. According to him there are two reasons why you should put the validation in the property's set method namely:

• Performance
• Better visibility of error conditions

I agree with him especially looking at the performance. To read the article follow the link below:

http://www.bluedoglimited.com/SharePointThoughts/ViewPost.aspx?ID=178

This is a simple tutorial for adding a new user to give access to the "Scorecard Development Site". This website is de maintainance tool voor de Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Accelerator (MOBSA). Here you can maintain scorecards, KPI's, KPI groups and lots of other stuff.

On the blog of Erol Giraudy i found a link to sample course material for SharePoint 2003 training. As stated on the SharePoint Solutions website:

"All sample course materials are property of SharePoint Solutions and subject to copyright laws. The sample course materials are provided for evaluation purposes only. They may not be copied and/or distributed to any person other than the individual registering on this page."

http://www.sharepointsolutions.com/dwnld8765cg01lpm33324.html

I got a question from Amit Vasu regarding the installation of SharePoint Portal Server 2003 with SQL Server versus MSDE. The issue was that his customer first wanted to use MSDE and if needed later on migrating to SQL Server.

This is possible and i did some investigation on MSDN and found the following. There is an article describing the migration from WMSDE to SQL Server:

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/wss/2/all/adminguide/en-us/stsf17.mspx

After this you have to change the connections in SharePoint Administration of the databases. the following walkthrough describes it:

Open the SharePoint Central Administration website and go to the "Windows SharePoint Services Central Administration". You will find under "Server Configuration" the option "Set configuration database server". Here you can change the configuration database to its new location.

Go to the "SharePoint Portal Server Central Administration". You will find under "Server Configuration" the option "Configure server topology". Here you change the content, component settings and configuration database to their new location.

Mark Kruger did a great job by creating and maintaining an extensive list of 3rd Party WebParts and SharePoint Tools. My compliments!! :)

http://www.sharepointblogs.com/mkruger/archive/2005/05/05/1944.aspx

Also a large list of SharePoint bloggers can be found at his blog.

http://www.sharepointblogs.com/mkruger/archive/2005/02/15/1310.aspx

A new blogger is in town :) Here name is Jessica Gruber and she is consultant with Microsoft Consulting Services in the UK. She will present at two events:

UK Office Developer Conference (29 - 30 June at Heathrow outside London) where I'll be presenting on Developing InfoPath Forms using Managed Code and on Customizing and Branding SharePoint Portal Server and Windows SharePoint Services

TechEd Europe (5 - 8 July in Amsterdam) where my topic will be “Office 12” Preview: Default Open XML File Formats.  Happily my session is the first one listed if you use the search tool and search for the "Windows Client Development" track!

I will visit the TechEd Europe and will drop by at here presentation. :)

http://blogs.msdn.com/jessicagruber/archive/2005/06/14/428843.aspx

 

USysWare has created a free collection of Visual Studio tools called DPack which provides a lot of extra functionality to the developer:

"DPack is a FREE collection of Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 and 2005 tools. DPack is designed to greatly increase developer's productivity, automate repetitive processes and expand upon some of the Microsoft Visual Studio features.

DPack is a FREE collection of Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 and 2005 tools. DPack includes various browser tools that allow the developer to quickly narrow the search down to a particular class, method or assembly type. DPack includes greatly enhanced numbered bookmarks feature, various code navigation tools as well streamlined surround with feature, and much more. New version introduces Solution Backup feature. "

http://www.usysware.com/dpack/

Google is my number one and favorit search machine and thanks to Mark Wagner i can put it in my SharePoint environment. :)

Mark Wagner has created a custom Google WebPart for a demo SharePoint site. He has provided two downloads. One for the WebPart package and the other containing the source code. As het stated this Google seacrch WebPart is not a replacement for the search feature of SharePoint itself.

    

There are three search options:

• Standard Google search
• Local Site Search
• Custom Site URL search

http://blogs.crsw.com/mark/articles/1009.aspx

At Microsoft there is a top 10 list of benefits using SharePoint Portal 2003. From that list i think there are some benefits which could be used as reasons for your customer for deployment of SharePoint Portal 2003. They are:

• Put relevant information at your fingertips
• Share knowledge across the organization.
• Find and make the most of organization's intellectual capital.
• Create self-service portals.
• Automate business processes.
• Reduce development time and cost with out-of-the-box portal services

Explaination of these benefits are found in the following MSDN article:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/sharepoint/prodinfo/topten.mspx