I got a lot of questions of colleages regarding custom templates and site definitions.

As stated in the help: "A custom template is a customization applied to a site definition. When a user customizes a site or list in the user interface, the custom template consists of the difference between the original state of the site or list as determined by its definition and the state of the site when the custom template is generated. Custom templates remain tied to a particular site definition (for example, the one for a SharePoint site or a Meeting Workspace site), so that if the site definition is not present or is changed, the custom template will not work."

In many cases building Portals with SharePoint Portal Server you want to change the defined Site definitions. These Site definitions are the templates you can choose from when you create a new site.

The problem with changing a Site definition is that when somebody else in another Portal creates a site with the same template, he is also getting your changes. So the following sequence of steps can be taken to create your own Site definition.

The first thing you have todo is copy an existing Site definition and rename it. Existing site definitions are found in the folder <localdrive>:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\60\Template\<localeid>. For example copy the STS folder and rename it to MYSTS.

In this folder you will find an XML folder containing the file ONET.XML. This is the schema file containing Collaborative Application Markup Language (CAML). If you want to make changes to the listings, WebParts and other stuff showing up when creating a site, this is file to make the changes in.

The next step is telling SharePoint that there is a new template defined. Under the folder <localdrive>:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\60\TEMPLATE\<localid>\XML you will find a schema file called WEBTEMP.XML. Copy this file and call it WEBTEMPMY.XML. It is very important that the name of the file starts with WEBTEMP.

Your WEBTEMPMY.XML will look like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!-- _lcid="1033" _version="11.0" _dal="1" -->
<!-- _LocalBinding -->
<Templates xmlns:ows="Microsoft SharePoint">
   <Template Name="MYSTS" ID="10200">
      <Configuration ID="0" Hidden="False" Title="<some title>" Type="0" ImageUrl="<someimage>" Description="<somedescription>"> 
      </Configuration>
 </Template>
</Templates>

The following things are very important:

• Make sure that the Name property of the Template element is the same as the name of your folder.
• The ID property of the Template element should be in the range of 10000 or higher. Make sure its not used anywhere else.
• The ID property of the Configuration element points to a configuration with the same id in the ONET.XML.
• Property Hidden determines if the template should appear in the list when creating sites. It could be that you create your own sites based on the Site definition in a custom WebPart and users are not able to use your Site definition.

The final step is resetting the IIS by calling iisreset. It also works when recycling the application pool used by your Portal.

Further information regarding this subject can be found in the article "Creating a Site Definition from an Existing Site Definition" in Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies 2003 Software Development Kit.

And finally a good article which goes further into this by Robert Bogue:

http://www.devx.com/dotnet/Article/27673/0

 

Did you ever wonder where those sites went if you create one under the Sites directory within SharePoint Portal Server? I did! If you try to list a sites by using the SPSite.AllWebs they will not show up. Why? So far as I can see they are created as "floating" sites. But there is a way to list them. The Sites directory is a Area and can be found easily.

First create a TopologyManager and retrieve the PortalSite object by using an Uri object.

TopologyManager topologyManager = new TopologyManager();
Uri uri = new Uri("http://localhost/");

PortalSiteCollection sites = topologyManager.PortalSites;

PortalSite portalSite = sites[uri];

Then get the PortalContext and use this to get the Guid of the SystemArea. The SystemArea is an enumeration providing you some starting points of Areas.

PortalContext portalContext = PortalApplication.GetContext(portalSite);

Guid homeGuid = AreaManager.GetSystemAreaGuid(portalContext, SystemArea.Home);

Based on the Guid its very easy to retrieve the actual Area object. And based on that Area object we retrieve the Sites Area object from its children.

Area homeArea = AreaManager.GetArea(portalContext, homeGuid); 
Area sitesArea = homeArea.Areas["Sites"];

Loop through the AreaListings in this Area object and check if its type is ListingType.Site. The URL property contains the url to the created sites.

foreach(AreaListing listing in sitesArea.Listings)
{
   if (listing.Type == ListingType.Site)
   {
      output.WriteLine(String.Format("{0} ({1})<br>", listing.Title, listing.URL));
   }
}

I found an impressive list of SharePoint links to divided in several categories. The list is made by Eric and can be downloaded as a zipped .htm file for importing into Internet Explorer. The list can be found at the following url:

http://blogs.officezealot.com/legault/archive/2004/08/08/2238.aspx

I'm doing some research about areas in SPS 2003. During my research i found a control called BreadCrumbTrail in the namespace Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls which indicates were the current area is in the portal structure. Some googling brought me to the blog of Manuel Montes. He gives us an example of how to use the control. Thanks Manuel! :)  

See below:

• Open any of the default.aspx pages for an area template in your favourite editor. For example, the SPSTOPIC\default.aspx page.
• Locate the following code that renders the page title:
  <tr> <td ID="onetidPageTitle" class="ms-pagetitle"> <SPSWC:CategoryProperty runat="server" Property="Name" /> </td> </tr>
• Comment this entry
• Replace the code with the following:
  <tr><td><spswc:breadcrumbtrail id="BreadCrumbTrail2" runat="server" titlelocid="MultiPage_BreadcrumbWebPartTitle" verticalmode="false" frametype="None"></td></tr>

Note that you will need to give the control a unique ID ("BreadCrumbTrail2") ast here is another control already on the page.

• Save the Page and take a look… You should see something like this in place of the Page Title.
  Back to: Home > Topics > Applications

Changing the appearances can be done changing the following styles:

.bc-cell
.bc-htable
.bc-trail
.bc-leadin
.ms-vb bc-cell

http://pasteldelimon.blogspot.com/2005/06/breadcrumb-links-for-sps-areas.html

For one of our customers we build a Portal used as a Company Management System. It is a management system for internal documents needed at several indoor as outdoor locations. This Portal is a very good example of creating a design for customers. Together with a designer it only took 5 days manhour to accomplish this. It involves changing styles, adding new styles and adding new images. Some changes in custom WebParts was needed.

I got this from a collegea: Steve Ballmer in action. This Remix is made of two earlier movie clips of presentations of Steve Balmer.

Fun to watch :)

http://www.flamingmailbox.com/maccomedy/movies/balmer.html

Thanks to Dustin an overview of the features found in SharePoint v3.

UI / UX

• WSS will have an entirely new user interface that includes better navigation controls and built-in breadcrumb trails.
• Pages will derive from “master pages“, meaning that you could re-skin an entire SharePoint site by modifying just one template file
• More professional out of the box themes
• FrontPage can directly edit each site's CSS file(s)
• Workflow built-in all over SharePoint, with tight integration with Outlook 12 tasks
• Individual documents can have document-specific workflows
• Item-level security on lists and libraries
• FrontPage has evolved further into a SharePoint designer tool (I read that as: the only SharePoint designer tool), and apparently, ghosted/unghosted pages won't be a problem any longer
• Recycle bin with user and administrator restore features for document libraries and list items
• InfoPath forms can be filled out with only a browser when published as (to?) a SharePoint site (even with FireFox)
• Customizable and extensible search (and search API), including “did you mean“-type search term corrections
• Lists can be viewed on mobile devices

Integration

• All lists and libraries have RSS feeds, and each list's feed can be customized to include whatever fields you'd like
• Event list RSS feeds include iCal files as enclosures
• Each site has a master “aggregating“ RSS feed
• Outlook 12 can perform 2-way online/offline syncronization of the following list types:
  • Contacts
  • Events
  • Tasks
  • Discussion Lists
  • Document Libraries (!)
• Discussion lists can create their own e-mail alias in Active Directory, allowing you to e-mail that alias to automatically archive that e-mail (and its attachments) to a SharePoint discussion list
• ALL lists and libraries have version history capability, and only “diffs“ are stored (differences from one change to the next)
• Access treats SharePoint sites as honest-to-goodness data sources

Developer-oriented news

• Existing web parts will “just work“ in the new SharePoint web part page framework
• Site definitions/templates will ship in the box for blogs and wikis (blogs can be built directly on your “My Site“!)
• All lists and libraries will have synchronous event handlers (not sure how these work with other interfaces to SharePoint data, like OM, WEBDAV, SOAP, etc., if the event handler has to raise an exception)
• List/library version history is exposed programmatically by way of the OM
• Multiple “content types” (sets of metadata, or “metadata templates“, if you will) for document libraries and lists, that include view information, workflows, bound events.
• FrontPage can edit workflows
• Business Data Catalog (datasource catalog on steroids, apparently).  This doesn't seem all that new to me, so I'll reserve commentary until more details emerge after the expected PDC sessions)

Service Pack 2 has been released for Windows SharePoint Services. Is includes updates previously released for Windows SharePoint Services:

• Windows SharePoint Services Service Pack 1
• Security Update for Windows SharePoint Services: KB887981

ServicePack 2 also includes stability improvements developed as a result of user input from the Microsoft Online Crash Analysis in Windows SharePoint Services and from Microsoft Product Support feedback.

You can get specific information about this update in the Microsoft Knowledge Base article (887624): Description of Windows SharePoint Services Service Pack 2.

Have fun :)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9c552114-dc9a-43ee-9281-b080b7c280b4&DisplayLang=en

A good friend of mine, Pedro Serrano of CaveDigital, just started recently his own blog. Just have a look. His company specialises also in SharePoint and he has some nifty, cool things built.

I installed locally commerce server 2002 sp3 on Windows 2002 in a domain. When I try to connect to BizDesk as local or domain administrator, I got the following error:

"An error occurred while accessing the Business Desk. Contact your system administrator."

It seems that in IIS 6.0 Active Server Pages (ASP) was prohibited. Just go into "Internet Information Server Manager" and look under "Web server extensions". Change the "Active Server Pages" to Allowed.