Today, deploying a web application is not as easy as it should be. Whether you are deploying your web to a shared hosting environment and paying monthly to maintain it OR whether you have a web server/s managed by your enterprise, there are a lot of manual steps involved in getting your application from point A to point B.
If you are deploying your web application to a shared hoster then today you have to use technologies like FTP which take a long time to get your web content to the hosted server. After deploying your content you have to manually go to hoster control panel and install your database by running sql scripts and configure various IIS settings like marking a folder as an application to isolate it from the rest of the application.
If you are in an enterprise environment and you want to get a web application deployed you have to systematically document each step that your server admins and DBAs have to perform. In most circumstances you also have to ask your admins to modify the web.config files and go to IIS Manager and configure your settings apart from deploying your web content. Your DBA has to do the necessary steps of running the sql scripts in the right order to get your DB up and running. Such installations many a times take hours to complete.
With Visual Studio 2010 and IIS Web Deployment Tool (MsDeploy.exe / Web Deploy) we are introducing a set of technologies which can seamlessly deploy your applications taking care of the problems stated above. Microsoft Web Deployment Tool is a free download available on the web… You can download MSDeploy from below location:
http://blogs.iis.net/msdeploy/archive/2008/10/29/the-web-deployment-tool-beta-2-is-now-available.aspx
Do note that installing Visual Studio 2010 will automatically install MSDeploy for you. Visual Studio 2010 CTP can be downloaded from below location:
http://www.asp.net/vwd/
Web Deployment feature sets in VS 2010 can be broken down into following major areas:
1. Web Packaging - VS 2010 uses MSDeploy to create a .zip file for your application which we call as a web package. This file contains meta data + the below artifacts
· All of your IIS Settings (e.g. application pools, error pages etc)
· Web Content (e.g. .aspx, .ascx, .js, images etc)
· SQL Server DB
· Various other artifacts like Security Certs, GAC Components, Registry etc
A web package can then be taken to any server and installed either via IIS Manager UI Wizard or even via command line or API for automated deployment scenarios.
2. Web.Config Transformation – With VS 2010 web deployment we are introducing XML Document Transform (XDT) which will allow you to transform your development time web.config file to production/deployment time web.config file. The transformation is controlled by web.config TRANSFORM files named web.debug.config, web.release.config etc. The naming of these files is tied to the MSBuild configuration you are trying to deploy. The transform file will need just the changes that you really want to make to your deployed web.config… You can control the type of changes by instructing the XDT engine using simple and easy to understand syntax…
e.g. the below syntax in web.release.config will replace the connectionString section with new values in the web.config file which is produced for deployment of your release configuration.
3. DB Deployment – VS 2010 allows you to deploy your application along with all of its dependencies including database dependencies on SQL Server. Just by providing the connection string of your source database VS10 will automatically script its data/schema and package it for deployment. VS will also allow you to provide custom .sql scripts and also sequence them correctly to run on the server. Once your DB is packaged along with your IIS Settings and web content you can choose to deploy it to any server by providing the connection string at the install time.
4. 1-Click Publish - VS 2010 will allow you to not only package your web applications with all of its dependencies but also use IIS remote management service to publish the application to remote server. VS 10 will now allow you to create a publish profile of your hoster account or of various testing servers and save your credentials securely so that going forward you can deploy to any of these publish profiles with just one click using Web One Click toolbar. With VS 10 you will also be able to publish using MsBuild command line so that you can configure your team build environment to include publishing in continuous integration model
Apply a Theme to all sub sites:
(works for MOSS 2007 only, not WSS 3.0)
- Change the top site to the theme of your choice using the normal method in Site Actions > Site Settings > Site Theme.
Navigate to the top site to see the newly applied theme. - View the HTML source of the SharePoint page using the theme you want.
Look for a link tag containing the .css file for the applied theme. It will look something like this:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" id="onetidThemeCSS" href="/apps/afe/_themes/Belltown/Bell1011-65001.css?rev=12%2E0%2E0%2E4518"/>
Copy the href value to your clipboard or to a text file if you like. It should look something like:
/apps/afe/_themes/Belltown/Bell1011-65001.css
- On your top level site, go to the Site Actions > Site Settings > Master Page screen.
Scroll to the bottom where the Alternate CSS URL section is. Select the "Specify a CSS file..." option. - Paste the path copied from the href above into the text box.
Check the Reset all sub-sites to inherit this alternate CSS URL option. - Click OK.
Navigate to your sub-sites and verify the theme has been applied.
As a leading small to mid-sized business web hosting provider, ASPHostCentral.com strives to offer the most technologically advanced hosting solutions available to our customers across the world. We proudly announce the availability of Windows Sharepoint 2010 French Language Pack version and you can preview the demo here.
Top Reasons to trust your SharePoint 2010 website to ASPHostCentral.com
What we think makes ASPHostCentral.com so compelling is how deeply integrated all the pieces are. We integrate and centralize everything--from the systems to the control panel software to the process of buying a domain name. For us, that means we can innovate literally everywhere. We've put the guys who develop the software and the admins who watch over the server right next to the 24-hour Fanatical Support team, so we all learn from each other:
- 24/7-based Support - We never fall asleep and we run a service that is operating 24/7 a year. Even everyone is on holiday during Easter or Christmas/New Year, we are always behind our desk serving our customers
- Excellent Uptime Rate - Our key strength in delivering the service to you is to maintain our server uptime rate. We never ever happy to see your site goes down and we truly understand that it will hurt your onlines business. If your service is down, it will certainly become our pain and we will certainly look for the right pill to kill the pain ASAP
- High Performance and Reliable Server - We never ever overload our server with tons of clients. We always load balance our server to make sure we can deliver an excellent service, coupling with the high performance and reliable server
- Experts in SharePoint 2010 Hosting - Given the scale of our environment, we have recruited and developed some of the best talent in the hosting technology that you are using. Our team is strong because of the experience and talents of the individuals who make up ASPHostCentral
- Daily Backup Service - We realise that your website is very important to your business and hence, we never ever forget to create a daily backup. Your database and website are backup every night into a permanent remote tape drive to ensure that they are always safe and secure. The backup is always ready and available anytime you need it
- Easy Site Administration - With our powerful control panel, you can always administer most of your site features easily without even needing to contact for our Support Team. Additionally, you can also install more than 100 FREE applications directly via our Control Panel in 1 minute!
Happy hosting!
With SharePoint Designer 2010, you can build complete, rich, reusable, process-centric applications on the SharePoint platform that integrate external data. SharePoint Designer 2010 makes it possible to build composite applications by configuring or designing components such as data sources, lists, content types, views, forms, workflows, and external content types — all without writing any code. Further, SharePoint Designer 2010 now provides tools for all of the important components in a SharePoint solution: “You don’t have to leave SharePoint Designer to build your solution.”
Workflows
SharePoint Designer 2010 includes major improvements to workflows. You can now rapidly design workflows that facilitate a wide range of business and human processes. And many new building blocks means that workflows are more flexible and powerful and capable of modeling more complex business logic and process
Reusable workflows
With SharePoint Designer 2010, you can create workflows that are easily reusable. You can create a reusable workflow in the top-level site in the site collection, and that workflow is globally reusable — meaning that the workflow can be associated to any list or library in the site collection. You can also create a reusable workflow in any subsite in the site collection; this workflow is available for reuse in that particular subsite
Export workflows
Now you can export a reusable workflow from one site collection and then upload and activate that workflow in a different site collection. SharePoint Designer 2010 supports exporting a workflow as a solution package or .wsp file
Association columns
If your reusable workflow requires certain columns to be present in the list or library that it is associated to, you can add those columns as association columns. Association columns get added automatically to a list or library when a reusable workflow is associated to that list or library
Associate workflows with content types
When you create a reusable workflow, you can choose to filter your reusable workflow to a specific content type. Then, in the browser, you can associate your reusable workflow either to that specific content type or to any content type that inherits from that content type. If you associate a workflow to a site content type, you make that workflow available for all items of that content type in every list and library to which that site content type has been added
Site workflows
You can think of a site workflow as a general site-wide process. A site workflow is associated to a site — not to a list, library, or content type. So unlike most workflows, a site workflow is not running on a specific list item. In the browser, you can start a site workflow or view the status of running site workflows by clicking Site Workflows on the Site Actions menu
Edit the workflows included with SharePoint Server
The three most popular workflows in SharePoint Server — the Approval, Collect Feedback, and Collect Signatures workflows — have been completely rebuilt as declarative workflows, meaning that they are now fully customizable in SharePoint Designer 2010. These workflows are event-driven, and all of the important events in the workflow are surfaced in the workflow editor, both for each task in the process and for the process as a whole. For example, you can easily add conditions and actions to define what happens when each task is assigned, expired, or completed.
Design a custom approval process
SharePoint Designer 2010 includes three new approval actions: Assign Item for Approval, Assign Item for Feedback, and General Task Process. The “big three” workflows included in SharePoint Server 2010 — the Approval, Collect Feedback, and Collect Signatures workflows — are built with these actions. The approval actions surface all of the important events in an approval process, making it easy for you to design a human workflow process where many people interact or collaborate on a specific document
Impersonation steps
In the previous version of SharePoint Designer, a workflow always impersonated the user who started the workflow and ran with that user’s permissions. Now, in SharePoint Designer 2010, you can now use impersonation steps to have the workflow perform actions by impersonating the workflow author instead of the workflow initiator. Impersonation steps are very useful in approval and publishing scenarios, where the people submitting content for approval and the people approving content have different permissions
Visio integration
Suppose that your organization has a business analyst who best understands the process that a workflow needs to capture. With SharePoint Designer 2010 and Visio Professional 2010, a business analyst can now sketch out workflows graphically in Visio. Visio Professional 2010 includes a Microsoft SharePoint Workflow template that includes shapes for all of the workflow conditions and actions. You can start in Visio and then export to SharePoint Designer, or you can start in SharePoint Designer and then export to Visio, or you can iterate on a workflow design with many roundtrips between both programs without losing any of the workflow settings
Workflow visualizations
You can easily view the status of any running workflow on the Workflow Status page. With a workflow visualization, a Visio diagram of your workflow is automatically created and displayed in a Visio Web Part on the Workflow Status page. The workflow visualization shows a “live” view of exactly where a specific workflow is at. Workflow visualizations require Visio Professional 2010 installed on your computer and Visio Graphics Services running on the server
InfoPath forms
If your server is running SharePoint Server 2010 (not SharePoint Foundation 2010 alone), all of the workflow forms — the association form, initiation form, and task forms — are now InfoPath 2010 forms. It is easy to change the appearance and layout of InfoPath forms, and you can add validation rules to an InfoPath form. To edit a workflow form in InfoPath 2010, just click the form and InfoPath opens directly from SharePoint Designer 2010
Substeps & new workflow actions
SharePoint Designer 2010 includes many new building blocks such as substeps and new workflow actions. For example, if your workflow is associated to a document library or if it is filtered to the Document content type, a group of contextual Document Set actions appear. A document set is a new feature in SharePoint Server 2010 whereby a group of documents are treated as a single unit, so a workflow action for a document set will iterate on all items in that document set. Other new workflow actions include utility actions to manipulate strings and dates; a new relational action that uses Active Directory to look up a person’s manager; and new list actions that a workflow can use to set permissions on a list item
Top Reasons to trust your SharePoint 2010 website to ASPHostCentral.com
What we think makes ASPHostCentral.com so compelling is how deeply integrated all the pieces are. We integrate and centralize everything--from the systems to the control panel software to the process of buying a domain name. For us, that means we can innovate literally everywhere. We've put the guys who develop the software and the admins who watch over the server right next to the 24-hour Fanatical Support team, so we all learn from each other:
- 24/7-based Support - We never fall asleep and we run a service that is operating 24/7 a year. Even everyone is on holiday during Easter or Christmas/New Year, we are always behind our desk serving our customers
- Excellent Uptime Rate - Our key strength in delivering the service to you is to maintain our server uptime rate. We never ever happy to see your site goes down and we truly understand that it will hurt your onlines business. If your service is down, it will certainly become our pain and we will certainly look for the right pill to kill the pain ASAP
- High Performance and Reliable Server - We never ever overload our server with tons of clients. We always load balance our server to make sure we can deliver an excellent service, coupling with the high performance and reliable server
- Experts in SharePoint 2010 Hosting - Given the scale of our environment, we have recruited and developed some of the best talent in the hosting technology that you are using. Our team is strong because of the experience and talents of the individuals who make up ASPHostCentral
- Daily Backup Service - We realise that your website is very important to your business and hence, we never ever forget to create a daily backup. Your database and website are backup every night into a permanent remote tape drive to ensure that they are always safe and secure. The backup is always ready and available anytime you need it
- Easy Site Administration - With our powerful control panel, you can always administer most of your site features easily without even needing to contact for our Support Team. Additionally, you can also install more than 100 FREE applications directly via our Control Panel in 1 minute!
Happy hosting!
With SharePoint Designer 2010, you can build complete, rich, reusable, process-centric applications on the SharePoint platform that integrate external data. SharePoint Designer 2010 makes it possible to build composite applications by configuring or designing components such as data sources, lists, content types, views, forms, workflows, and external content types — all without writing any code. Further, SharePoint Designer 2010 now provides tools for all of the important components in a SharePoint solution: “You don’t have to leave SharePoint Designer to build your solution.”
Redesigned user interface
The user interface of SharePoint Designer 2010 has been completely redesigned to “put the ‘SharePoint’ into SharePoint Designer.” Now all of the important components in a site or solution — lists and content types, views and forms, workflows, data sources and external content types, page layouts and master pages — are easy to find. And it’s easy to see how components are related to each other — for example, when you view the summary page for a list, you can easily see all of that list’s views, forms, workflows, content types, and custom actions.
File tab
When you start SharePoint Designer 2010, the new File tab makes it easy to get started. Here you can open existing sites or create new sites. You can also open pages or sites that you have recently worked with, and add new components such as lists and workflows to the current site
Site summary page
Every site has a summary page where you can change settings or manage various aspects of your site. For example, you can now manage permissions directly from SharePoint Designer 2010. And like every summary page, the site summary page shows related components — for example, here you can easily view and navigate to all subsites in the current site
Navigation pane
The Navigation pane makes it easy to find and navigate to all of the important components in a site that you use to build a solution. Whether you’re modeling your data and need to work with lists and content types, or whether you’re designing workflows to add the logic that “glues” your solution together, you can find the components you need in the Navigation pane
Gallery pages
Gallery pages make it easy to find and edit any of the important components of your solution. In the Navigation pane, clicking any component will show you a gallery of all such components in the current site — for example, you can easily see all workflows or lists in the site. On a gallery page, just click any component to edit it.
Summary pages
A summary page gives you an all-up view or portal into all of the pieces that make up a component. For example, the summary page for a content type shows you the forms and workflows for that content type. The summary page for a list shows you the views, forms, content type, custom actions, and workflows for that list. From a summary page, you can edit the settings for that component — such as the name or permissions — or you can edit the component itself.
List & content type editors
With SharePoint Designer 2010, you can edit all of the important components that comprise a SharePoint solution — including lists and content types. You use lists and content types to model your data, so these components are often at the core of a solution. And now SharePoint Designer 2010 provides a full-page editor for both lists and content types. You can quickly edit the columns and settings of a list or content type in one place, without having to navigate between pages as in the browser
Navigation bar
As you navigate through the components in a site, the Navigation bar can help you understand where you are in the site and how the various components are related to each other. The Navigation bar displays breadcrumbs that show where you are in the site hierarchy. There are also Forward and Backward buttons, a Recent Pages drop-down menu that shows your recent navigation history, and drop-down menus for each node that show all of the children for any page or component in the hierarchy
Ribbon
The Ribbon will make you more efficient and productive in SharePoint Designer 2010 because the Ribbon surfaces all of the important features in the right context for what you’re working on. For example, if you’re working with a Data View in the page editor, contextual tabs appear on the Ribbon that provide all of the tools and options for working with Data Views: conditional formatting, filtering and sorting, adding or removing columns, asynchronous updates, and more are available with just a single click.
Zoom to Contents
A SharePoint page can have a lot going on with content placeholders, Web Part zones, controls, and other page elements. When you’re working with a SharePoint page, often you want to focus on a single element, such as PlaceHolderMain or a Web Part zone or a Data View. Now you can select any of those elements, and then click Zoom to Contents on the Ribbon. After you zoom to contents, both Design view and Code view will show only the element that you want to work with, so you won’t be distracted by the visual clutter or code on the rest of the page
All Files view
The new user interface in SharePoint Designer 2010 focuses on surfacing all of the important components in a SharePoint solution. If you used the Folder List in previous versions of SharePoint Designer, you can still have the experience of working with the files and folders in a site by using All Files view.
Top Reasons to trust your SharePoint 2010 website to ASPHostCentral.com
What we think makes ASPHostCentral.com so compelling is how deeply integrated all the pieces are. We integrate and centralize everything--from the systems to the control panel software to the process of buying a domain name. For us, that means we can innovate literally everywhere. We've put the guys who develop the software and the admins who watch over the server right next to the 24-hour Fanatical Support team, so we all learn from each other:
- 24/7-based Support - We never fall asleep and we run a service that is operating 24/7 a year. Even everyone is on holiday during Easter or Christmas/New Year, we are always behind our desk serving our customers
- Excellent Uptime Rate - Our key strength in delivering the service to you is to maintain our server uptime rate. We never ever happy to see your site goes down and we truly understand that it will hurt your onlines business. If your service is down, it will certainly become our pain and we will certainly look for the right pill to kill the pain ASAP
- High Performance and Reliable Server - We never ever overload our server with tons of clients. We always load balance our server to make sure we can deliver an excellent service, coupling with the high performance and reliable server
- Experts in SharePoint 2010 Hosting - Given the scale of our environment, we have recruited and developed some of the best talent in the hosting technology that you are using. Our team is strong because of the experience and talents of the individuals who make up ASPHostCentral
- Daily Backup Service - We realise that your website is very important to your business and hence, we never ever forget to create a daily backup. Your database and website are backup every night into a permanent remote tape drive to ensure that they are always safe and secure. The backup is always ready and available anytime you need it
- Easy Site Administration - With our powerful control panel, you can always administer most of your site features easily without even needing to contact for our Support Team. Additionally, you can also install more than 100 FREE applications directly via our Control Panel in 1 minute!
Happy hosting!
Out of the box templates SharePoint Foundation includes Pre-defined alert templates for e-mail and SMS messages
Pre-defined Alert Template Location: %ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\14\TEMPLATE\XML
SharePoint Foundation includes Pre-defined alert templates for e-mail and SMS messages
Pre-defined Alert Template Location: %ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\14\TEMPLATE\XML
Email Template: AlertTemplates.xml
SMS Template: AlertTemplates_SMS.xml
Template includes information such as the format, contents and properties for the alert email and SMS messages.
Customize alerts
Customize alerts
(1) Create a copy of the xml template file that you need to change - AlertTemplates.xml and AlertTemplates_SMS.xml
(2) Modify the copy of the alert template file - (The original template file should not be modified)
You can make changes to the template such as add a button/link, include an image or privacy information, modify the look of the alert etc.
To customize the appearance of alerts, modify the css by using the Format element.
Resource variables listed within the template definition file, such as $Resources:Alerts_anything_filter_shortname, can be found in core.resx (in the local_drive\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\Resources folder)
If you are modifying any element other than the Format element, both the email and the SMS templates should be modified, in parallel - the 2 templates should be in sync except for the Format element.
(3) Load the custom templates by using the command: stsadm -o updatealerttemplates. I haven't found a direct equivalent Powershell command.
If both, the email and the SMS template are updated, the UpdateAlertTemplates command needs to be run twice, once for each of the two files.
(4) Restart IIS
(5) The SharePoint Timer service may need to be restarted.
Top Reasons to trust your SharePoint 2010 website to ASPHostCentral.com
What we think makes ASPHostCentral.com so compelling is how deeply integrated all the pieces are. We integrate and centralize everything--from the systems to the control panel software to the process of buying a domain name. For us, that means we can innovate literally everywhere. We've put the guys who develop the software and the admins who watch over the server right next to the 24-hour Fanatical Support team, so we all learn from each other:
- 24/7-based Support - We never fall asleep and we run a service that is operating 24/7 a year. Even everyone is on holiday during Easter or Christmas/New Year, we are always behind our desk serving our customers
- Excellent Uptime Rate - Our key strength in delivering the service to you is to maintain our server uptime rate. We never ever happy to see your site goes down and we truly understand that it will hurt your onlines business. If your service is down, it will certainly become our pain and we will certainly look for the right pill to kill the pain ASAP
- High Performance and Reliable Server - We never ever overload our server with tons of clients. We always load balance our server to make sure we can deliver an excellent service, coupling with the high performance and reliable server
- Experts in SharePoint 2010 Hosting - Given the scale of our environment, we have recruited and developed some of the best talent in the hosting technology that you are using. Our team is strong because of the experience and talents of the individuals who make up ASPHostCentral
- Daily Backup Service - We realise that your website is very important to your business and hence, we never ever forget to create a daily backup. Your database and website are backup every night into a permanent remote tape drive to ensure that they are always safe and secure. The backup is always ready and available anytime you need it
- Easy Site Administration - With our powerful control panel, you can always administer most of your site features easily without even needing to contact for our Support Team. Additionally, you can also install more than 100 FREE applications directly via our Control Panel in 1 minute!
Happy hosting!
Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 includes Microsoft Business Connectivity Services, which are a set of services and features that provide a way to connect SharePoint solutions to sources of external data and to define external content types that are based on that external data. External content types resemble content types and allow the presentation of and interaction with external data in SharePoint lists (known as external lists) and Web Parts. External systems that Microsoft Business Connectivity Services can connect to include SQL Server databases, SAP applications, Web services (including Windows Communication Foundation Web services), custom applications, and Web sites based on SharePoint. By using Microsoft Business Connectivity Services, you can design and build solutions that extend SharePoint collaboration capabilities to include external business data and the processes that are associated with that data
Microsoft Business Connectivity Services solutions use a set of standardized interfaces to provide access to business data. As a result, developers of solutions do not have to learn programming practices that apply to a specific system or adapter for each external data source. Microsoft Business Connectivity Services also provide the run-time environment in which solutions that include external data are loaded, integrated, and executed.
Typical solutions based on Business Connectivity Services
Information workers typically perform much of their work outside the formal processes of a business system. For example, they collaborate by telephone or e-mail messages, use documents and spreadsheets from multiple sources, and switch between being online and offline. Solutions that are based on Microsoft Business Connectivity Services can be designed to fit within these informal processes that information workers use:
- They can be built by combining multiple services and features from external data systems to deliver solutions that are targeted to specific roles
- They support informal interactions and target activities and processes that occur mostly outside formal enterprise systems. Because they are built by using SharePoint 2010 Products, solutions that are based on Microsoft Business Connectivity Services promote collaboration
- They help users perform tasks within the familiar user interface of SharePoint 2010 products.
Here are some examples of solutions that are based on Microsoft Business Connectivity Services:
- Help desk An enterprise implements its help desk, which provides internal technical support, as a solution that is based on Microsoft Business Connectivity Services. Support requests and the technical support knowledge base are stored in external databases and are integrated into the solution by using the Business Data Connectivity service. The solution displays both support requests and the knowledge base in the Web browser. Information workers can view their current requests and tech support specialists view the requests assigned to them. Workflows take support issues through each of their stages. Managers on the technical support team can view dashboards that display help desk reports. Typical reports indicate the number of support issues assigned to each support specialist, the most critical issues currently, and the number of support incidents that are handled by each support specialist during a given time period
- Sales Dashboard A sales dashboard application helps sales associates in an organization quickly find the information that they need and enter new data. Sales orders and customer information are managed in an external database and integrated into the solution by using Microsoft Business Connectivity Services. Depending on their roles, team members can view sales analytics information, individual team members’ sales performance data, sales leads, and a customer’s contact information and orders. Sales professionals can view their daily calendars, view tasks assigned to them by their managers, collaborate with team members, and read industry news
Top Reasons to trust your SharePoint 2010 website to ASPHostCentral.com
What we think makes ASPHostCentral.com so compelling is how deeply integrated all the pieces are. We integrate and centralize everything--from the systems to the control panel software to the process of buying a domain name. For us, that means we can innovate literally everywhere. We've put the guys who develop the software and the admins who watch over the server right next to the 24-hour Fanatical Support team, so we all learn from each other:
- 24/7-based Support - We never fall asleep and we run a service that is operating 24/7 a year. Even everyone is on holiday during Easter or Christmas/New Year, we are always behind our desk serving our customers
- Excellent Uptime Rate - Our key strength in delivering the service to you is to maintain our server uptime rate. We never ever happy to see your site goes down and we truly understand that it will hurt your onlines business. If your service is down, it will certainly become our pain and we will certainly look for the right pill to kill the pain ASAP
- High Performance and Reliable Server - We never ever overload our server with tons of clients. We always load balance our server to make sure we can deliver an excellent service, coupling with the high performance and reliable server
- Experts in SharePoint 2010 Hosting - Given the scale of our environment, we have recruited and developed some of the best talent in the hosting technology that you are using. Our team is strong because of the experience and talents of the individuals who make up ASPHostCentral
- Daily Backup Service - We realise that your website is very important to your business and hence, we never ever forget to create a daily backup. Your database and website are backup every night into a permanent remote tape drive to ensure that they are always safe and secure. The backup is always ready and available anytime you need it
- Easy Site Administration - With our powerful control panel, you can always administer most of your site features easily without even needing to contact for our Support Team. Additionally, you can also install more than 100 FREE applications directly via our Control Panel in 1 minute!
Happy hosting!
In this post we will show you step-by-step how to build your own minimal publishing masterpage for SharePoint 2010. We will not modify existing CSS or SP2010 masterpages. Instead we will show you how to create your own clean cross browser layout and how to add the right SharePoint controls and placeholders. We have included enough detail so that even beginners should be able to do it themselves. This post will not include a final downloadable masterpage as we think that doesn’t make sense. Each layout is unique and the objective of this post is only to make you aware of a number of steps that are involved.
Preparation
Creating the web application and site collection
First we will need to create a web application and a root site collection that will host our publishing site. For that purpose you will go to the Central Administration site. There you will create a new web application by choosing Manage web applications. At the ribbon you click the New button. In the dialog that follows you can just click OK as this will only be our test site for designing the masterpage. Feel free to change the port number or add your own URL if you have something available. In the dialog that tells you that the creation of the web application has succeeded you will need to click the link that says Create site collection. Choose the Title of your site and select the Publishing tab to show the available publishing templates. Choose the Publishing Portal template, fill out your name as the primary site collection administrator and click OK. This is all extremely straightforward but we thought to include these steps for the newbies. ;-) Now, let us move towards the more interesting part
Tableless design
For our Masterpage we will rely on DIV tags only to create the layout. What we would like to suggest is that you create your master page as a clean HTML page in notepad, using a couple of images and after that fire up SharePoint designer to put in all of the SharePoint controls and placeholders.
Now, let us think about the design. Our layout should have a fixed width of 1000px and centered in the middle of the page. It should have a header, a main body and a footer. The main body should consist of a left navigation and a right main page section. To center everything we will define a container that is responsible for centering the content. The html for our master page could look like this:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Test master page</TITLE>
<STYLE>
/* we will put style definitions here */
</STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<DIV ID=”mycontainer”>
<DIV ID=”myheader”>…</DIV>
<DIV ID=”mymaincontent”>
<DIV ID=”myleftnav”>…</DIV>
<DIV ID=”mymainpage”>…</DIV>
</DIV>
<DIV ID=”myfooter”>…</DIV>
</DIV>
</BODY>
</HTML>
If you would try this it wouldn’t work as DIV’s per definition will force a line break. See the image below:
We have outlined the DIVs using the IE Developer Toolbar
Our design will follow the principle of floating layouts. So we need to add style definitions that tell us how wide our layout is and secondly which DIV needs to float to the left. The concept is quite similar to word wrapping. If you make the page smaller, words start to wrap to the next line. If you make the container a specific width and think about DIVs as if they would be words, then you will understand the concept of a floating design
So let us add some style definitions:
<STYLE>
body { margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; text-align:center; }
div { margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; border: none; }
#mycontainer { height:100%; width:1000px; padding: 0; margin: 0px auto; position:relative; text-align:left; }
#myheader { width:1000px; height:30px; float:left }
#mymaincontent { width:1000px; float:left }
#myleftnav { width:300px; float:left }
#mymainpage { width:700px; float:left }
#myheader { width:1000px; float:left }
</STYLE>
Now our page looks quite different. The DIVs are nicely centered. In the middle we have a floating block for the left nav and a block for the main page content. You can add background images here as well. Try not to add paddings or margins here as you will have to change widths as well. If you don’t add them, your cross browser experience will become much more seamless.
SP2010 Components and placeholders
Now let us have a quick look at the homepage of your newly created site. Realistically, a large number of components and placeholders are not applicable if you are going to redesign the look and feel (including new page layouts). However, a number of blocks are quite essential like the Ribbon. But did you also think about for instance the notification area, the developer dashboard and so on? In this post we will show you a very minimalistic approach that will eventually work with this homepage. The homepage we are seeing below is using the NIGHTANDDAY.MASTER masterpage and a page layout called WELCOMESPLASH.ASPX. The masterpage is using a stylesheet called …. NIGHTANDDAY.CSS which is located at the style library core folder. Have a look at some of the components that we want to use:
Things to keep in mind
- The Ribbon container is a piece of HTML that contains everything that is contained in the blue box you can see above. So that includes the Site logo, the notification area, the user menu, the dev dashboard, search, the ribbon menu, button row etc
- Some area’s are hidden but will be used at runtime. Take for instance the notification area or the area where the performance information will be displayed
- Most of the main page content is part of the PlaceHolderMain
The WelcomeSplash page layout
The welcome splash page layout is using a number of content placeholders that have been defined in the master page:
- PlaceHolderPageTitle
- PlaceHolderPageTitleInArea
- PlaceHolderMain
- PlaceHolderTitleBreadCrumb
- PlaceHolderPageImage
- PlaceHolderNavSpacer
Not much needed to show this home page right? Now, as to our new master page we need to move some of the placeholders into our masterpage and at the same time, make sure we move around some of the HTML to make sure that hidden DIV areas can be used at runtime. And finally we will add only a tiny little piece of CSS to have the links follow the theme. The good news is we will completely skip the nightanddaymaster.css
Create your own master page
Follow the steps below to create your own master page, using the HTML we have created at the beginning of this post, and make it work on your newly created publishing site. For readability we have left out the navigation controls. You can always copy paste the controls from the night and day master to your leftnav DIV and it should work instantly
1. Start SharePoint Designer, open your site collection that is your publishing site
2. If you have images, upload them to the Site assets folder
3. Create a new CSS file at the Style library and add your CSS
4. Create a new master page
5. Add a CSS registration to your new master page
6. After your body tag add some HTML for accessibility (copy from Nightandday.master)
7. Enter your own HTML that is your new master page with the DIVs as described above
8. Move the ribbon to your header DIV
9. Move the Placeholder main to your mainpage div
10. Switch the masterpage setting on the site to your new masterpage
Upload images to Site assets folder
Create a new CSS file and add your own CSS
Click on the All Files item in the Site Objects overview. From the All Files overview, click Style Library. Next at the Ribbon choose File –> CSS.
Add the CSS we have defined above:
Create a new master page
Choose Master Pages from the Site Objects menu. From the Ribbon choose Blank Master Page. We have named our master Mymaster.master
Choose Edit file from the Ribbon
Add your CSS Registration
Before we are going to do that we want to make sure the references to the SharePoint libraries are included. So we copy lines 3-12 from the NightAndDay.master.
It may also be wise to copy the head section of the NightAndDay.master as you will probably need them anyway:
You can safely delete the last line that is referencing the NightAndDay.CSS. Replace that with your reference:
<SharePoint:CssRegistration name="<% $SPUrl:~sitecollection/Style Library/mycss.css %>" After="corev4.css" runat="server"/>
Perhaps you have noticed that we did not include the language selector here as our style sheet will be language independent. (Probably will change that for countries with a different reading order and or navigation on a different spot).
After your body tag add some HTML for accessibility
Furthermore you will have to copy the few lines at the top of your document starting at line 38 with the BODY tag up to line 58 the A tag called HiddenAnchor
The next line is the DIV that contains the ribbon.
Enter your own HTML that is your new master page with the DIVs as described above
Move the ribbon to your header DIV
In this step you have some freedom. Like we showed earlier, the ribbon contains several components. They don’t need to be part of the ribbon div. Keep that in mind. So take for instance the Site image. If your design has a predefined site image, just delete the first div that says site-image-title. If your search should be at the right top corner. Take the DIV that is called s4-searcharea and move it to another place in your HTML. Same for notification area, page status bar, developer dashboard and user menu. The choice is yours!
It doesn’t make sense to include an image here as the HTML you have to copy is quite large.
Move the Placeholder main to your mainpage div
The most important DIV that follows your ribbon is called the s4-workspace. That DIV contains the navigation menu’s and the main page body, but also the area that will contain the contents of the developer dashboard. Where in the ribbon we had only the button definition for the developers dashboard, the contents is in another div!
In this step just copy the placeholder for the PlaceHolderMain to your mainpage DIV:
All of the placeholders that you are not going to use can be moved to the ASP panel that is at the bottom and has the property set to invisible.
Save your master page, optionally check in and approve and switch to the site settings of your site collection
Change the master page on your site
Under your site settings menu –> Look and Feel –> Master page. You will see a drop down list of master pages. Just switch the top one to your master page and your done. Browse to the home of your site to see the result.
Your final HTML should have a syntax similar to this:
<% references go here %>
<html>
<head>
… copy from nightandday.master
… <SharePoint:CssRegistration ….. />
</head>
<body ….>
… accessibility scripts go here, copy from nightandday.master
<DIV ID="mycontainer">
<DIV ID="myheader">
… copy ribbon DIV here, remove components from Ribbon that need repositioning
</DIV>
<DIV ID="mymaincontent">
<DIV ID="myleftnav">… Left Nav controls go here ….</DIV>
<DIV ID="mymainpage">
…. <asp:ContentPlaceHolder id=”PlaceHolderMain” runat …… />
</DIV>
</DIV>
<DIV ID="myfooter">FOOTER</DIV>
</DIV>
Top Reasons to trust your SharePoint 2010 website to ASPHostCentral.com
What we think makes ASPHostCentral.com so compelling is how deeply integrated all the pieces are. We integrate and centralize everything--from the systems to the control panel software to the process of buying a domain name. For us, that means we can innovate literally everywhere. We've put the guys who develop the software and the admins who watch over the server right next to the 24-hour Fanatical Support team, so we all learn from each other:
- 24/7-based Support - We never fall asleep and we run a service that is operating 24/7 a year. Even everyone is on holiday during Easter or Christmas/New Year, we are always behind our desk serving our customers
- Excellent Uptime Rate - Our key strength in delivering the service to you is to maintain our server uptime rate. We never ever happy to see your site goes down and we truly understand that it will hurt your onlines business. If your service is down, it will certainly become our pain and we will certainly look for the right pill to kill the pain ASAP
- High Performance and Reliable Server - We never ever overload our server with tons of clients. We always load balance our server to make sure we can deliver an excellent service, coupling with the high performance and reliable server
- Experts in SharePoint 2010 Hosting - Given the scale of our environment, we have recruited and developed some of the best talent in the hosting technology that you are using. Our team is strong because of the experience and talents of the individuals who make up ASPHostCentral
- Daily Backup Service - We realise that your website is very important to your business and hence, we never ever forget to create a daily backup. Your database and website are backup every night into a permanent remote tape drive to ensure that they are always safe and secure. The backup is always ready and available anytime you need it
- Easy Site Administration - With our powerful control panel, you can always administer most of your site features easily without even needing to contact for our Support Team. Additionally, you can also install more than 100 FREE applications directly via our Control Panel in 1 minute!
Happy hosting!
We are giving you this information because we found it the most useful hub for AAM data in SharePoint 2007. There is probably no reason ever to be using this in a live production environment. If you find you are reading this late a night or on the weekend and you are trying AAM to get a live farm working you are probably already in trouble.
The one time we were going to use AAM was to allow the Central Admin server to work on the URL for the Intranet in a farm. In pre-production we got this working using AAM, but the difficulty caused us to step back and speak to some of the more level heads on our team. What we decided was that AAM would impose a great deal of risk on the project and we answered back on the requirement. Once we explained the risk to making your Central Admin a mapping to your intranet URL the client understood and we simply dropped the requirement.
So with that warning please feel free to read on……
To avoid many questions and simplify troubleshooting, we would suggest this order when configuring AAM, which worked for me so far:
1. Understand what AAM is, and what is it being used for in your particular case
2. Create a top level site collection in the application that you are trying to configure ( like http://mymossserver )
3. Browse the site, make sure it works
4. Complete the network configuration for the alternate URL that you are planning to use ( like http://intranet.mycompany.com ). If you do not know how to do this part, get your network administrator involved. This is a fundamental requirement to get it working
5. Create the host header entries on IIS for the web application you are trying to configure. If you do not know how to do this, get your IIS admin, or system admin (whomever configures IIS in your environment) involved. This is a fundamental requirement to get it working
6. Then browse the site using the new url you have configured. If you have configured it correctly, you should be able to browse the sharepoint site with the configured URL ( http://intranet.mycompany.com ), but redirected to the default zone mapping you have at this point ( http://mymossserver )... This means the network is capable of transporting the request to IIS, and IIS is capable of handing the request to the correct SharePoint web application
7. Then add the AAM for the desired zone in central admin, and make sure you have ONE mapping configured for each zone. (intranet zone in this case) Beware, the default zone will be selected when you open the page, you probably want to CHANGE IT
8. Browse the site with the new URL (http://intranet.mycompany.com). Voila ! Note: If you added two mappings to the same zone, you will see the exact same symptom of getting redirected to the first URL mapping in that zone...
Also remember; the zone and the URL mapping should be ONE-TO-ONE, not ONE-TO-MANY, and not MANY-TO-ONE. There is nothing in the UI to prevent you from entering the same url for different zones, or add two URLs to the same zone, so you can add it, but it either won't work as expected at all, or it will be partially broken. In total, you have 5 total AAM available, one for each zone.
Top Reasons to trust your SharePoint 2010 website to ASPHostCentral.com
What we think makes ASPHostCentral.com so compelling is how deeply integrated all the pieces are. We integrate and centralize everything--from the systems to the control panel software to the process of buying a domain name. For us, that means we can innovate literally everywhere. We've put the guys who develop the software and the admins who watch over the server right next to the 24-hour Fanatical Support team, so we all learn from each other:
- 24/7-based Support - We never fall asleep and we run a service that is operating 24/7 a year. Even everyone is on holiday during Easter or Christmas/New Year, we are always behind our desk serving our customers
- Excellent Uptime Rate - Our key strength in delivering the service to you is to maintain our server uptime rate. We never ever happy to see your site goes down and we truly understand that it will hurt your onlines business. If your service is down, it will certainly become our pain and we will certainly look for the right pill to kill the pain ASAP
- High Performance and Reliable Server - We never ever overload our server with tons of clients. We always load balance our server to make sure we can deliver an excellent service, coupling with the high performance and reliable server
- Experts in SharePoint 2010 Hosting - Given the scale of our environment, we have recruited and developed some of the best talent in the hosting technology that you are using. Our team is strong because of the experience and talents of the individuals who make up ASPHostCentral
- Daily Backup Service - We realise that your website is very important to your business and hence, we never ever forget to create a daily backup. Your database and website are backup every night into a permanent remote tape drive to ensure that they are always safe and secure. The backup is always ready and available anytime you need it
- Easy Site Administration - With our powerful control panel, you can always administer most of your site features easily without even needing to contact for our Support Team. Additionally, you can also install more than 100 FREE applications directly via our Control Panel in 1 minute!
Happy hosting!
Creating SharePoint themes used to require editing CSS style sheets manually or using a tool like SharePoint Designer. Furthermore, packaging and deploying the themes required administrative access to the server. This is no longer the case! Now you can create a SharePoint theme without ever having to see a single CSS style and you can easily deploy it to your server and apply it all within your web browser! Here's how it's done with Microsoft PowerPoint 2010
Create the theme
First, open Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 and proceed to create an Office theme just like you would for a PowerPoint presentation. See this PowerPoint help documentation which describes how to do this. For this example we created a theme called Greens which uses a predominately green color scheme. The files which make up Office themes have a .THMX file extension
Upload the theme
Themes may now be stored in the Themes Gallery on your SharePoint server, and you can also find them on the file system on your SharePoint server in the following directory
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server
Extensions\14\Template\Global\Lists\Themes
After you have saved the <ThemeName>.thmx file, open your web browser and navigate to the Theme Gallery on your SharePoint server. To find the Theme Gallery and upload your custom theme, follow these steps
1. Open your SharePoint site
2. Click Site Actions
3. Click Site Settings
4. In the Look and Feel section, click Site theme
5. At the top of the page click the Theme Gallery link
6. Click the Documents tab
7. Click Upload Document
8. Click Browse
9. Browse to the <ThemeName>.thmx file you created and select it
10. Click OK
11. Click Save
Apply the theme
1. Click Site Actions
2. Click Site Settings
3. In the Look and Feel section, click Site theme
4. In the Select a Theme section select the theme you uploaded
5. Selecting a theme in the list will show you the colors and fonts specific to the theme. Here you can see the colors which make up the Greens theme I created
6. Click the Preview button to see what the theme will look like once it is applied
7. To apply the theme to your SharePoint site, click the Apply button
Here you can see the Greens theme applied to a SharePoint site
Yes! It works for administration pages too!
It also works for dialog popup windows …
… the Site Actions menu …
and the Ribbon too!
Under the hood
What happens when you apply the theme to your SharePoint site? First, SharePoint opens up the THMX file and creates several images and CSS style sheets based on the colors defined in your custom theme. Then, a new subdirectory is created in the Themes Gallery and the images and CSS style sheets are put inside it. The first time you apply a theme to a SharePoint site the newly created subdirectory is named 0. The directory name is incremented by 1 each time you apply a new theme to the site.
Here’s a screenshot from SharePoint Designer 2010 which shows the subdirectory that is created when you apply a theme to a SharePoint site. In this case the subdirectory name is 3 because I applied 4 separate themes to the SharePoint site; the subdirectory name started as 0 and was incremented 4 times
If you want to modify the theme further you can then edit the CSS style sheets and the images in the new subdirectory for your theme
One size does not fit all
The approach outlined in this blog post will not change the layout of your site, it will merely change the colors, heading font, and body font. It’s a helpful approach to use when developing a prototype or a demo and you don’t have enough time to dig into the CSS to change the layout. It’s also a helpful approach to use when your requirements do not call for major look and feel changes and color changes will suffice. Other approaches also exist for changing the look and feel of your SharePoint sites, such as making custom Master Pages, Page Layouts, and CSS files. This approach usually takes less time than the other approaches, however it is not as flexible
Top Reasons to trust your SharePoint 2010 website to ASPHostCentral.com
What we think makes ASPHostCentral.com so compelling is how deeply integrated all the pieces are. We integrate and centralize everything--from the systems to the control panel software to the process of buying a domain name. For us, that means we can innovate literally everywhere. We've put the guys who develop the software and the admins who watch over the server right next to the 24-hour Fanatical Support team, so we all learn from each other:
- 24/7-based Support - We never fall asleep and we run a service that is operating 24/7 a year. Even everyone is on holiday during Easter or Christmas/New Year, we are always behind our desk serving our customers
- Excellent Uptime Rate - Our key strength in delivering the service to you is to maintain our server uptime rate. We never ever happy to see your site goes down and we truly understand that it will hurt your onlines business. If your service is down, it will certainly become our pain and we will certainly look for the right pill to kill the pain ASAP
- High Performance and Reliable Server - We never ever overload our server with tons of clients. We always load balance our server to make sure we can deliver an excellent service, coupling with the high performance and reliable server
- Experts in SharePoint 2010 Hosting - Given the scale of our environment, we have recruited and developed some of the best talent in the hosting technology that you are using. Our team is strong because of the experience and talents of the individuals who make up ASPHostCentral
- Daily Backup Service - We realise that your website is very important to your business and hence, we never ever forget to create a daily backup. Your database and website are backup every night into a permanent remote tape drive to ensure that they are always safe and secure. The backup is always ready and available anytime you need it
- Easy Site Administration - With our powerful control panel, you can always administer most of your site features easily without even needing to contact for our Support Team. Additionally, you can also install more than 100 FREE applications directly via our Control Panel in 1 minute!
Happy hosting!
The new packaging and deployment stuff for SharePoint 2010 is certainly a lot better than VSeWSS but there are a few things missing, such as the ability to add a WCF service as a project item. One of these days I’ll build a template to do it but for now here’s a quick step by step guide.
Add SVC file to Layouts folder
To make a Windows Communication Framework service available we need to host it somewhere. Since SharePoint runs on IIS, we need to create a .svc file with details of the service implementation. Of course before we create the file we need somewhere to put it and for the purposes of this demonstration we’ll use a custom subfolder within the %sproot%\TEMPLATE\Layouts folder. We can set up this folder automatically using our Visual Studio project
1. From the Project menu select Add SharePoint “Layouts” Mapped Folder. You’ll notice that a new folder is added to the solution
2. We can now go ahead and add our MyWCFService.svc file. In the Layouts\<MyProjectName> folder. Add a new XML File named MyWCFService.svc
3. Replace the contents of the file with the following code
| 1 <%@ Assembly Name="$SharePoint.Project.AssemblyFullName$"%> |
| 2 | <% @ServiceHost Service="MyProject.MyService" %> |
Token Replacement in Visual Studio
Visual Studio 2010 allows the use of replaceable tokens when creating SharePoint solution packages. Our .svc file makes use of the token $SharePoint.Project.AssemblyFullName$ that will be replaced when the package is built, by the 4 part assembly name for the associated assembly. However, tokens are not automatically replaced in files with an .svc extension. Thankfully this is a simple problem to resolve.
1. Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\SharePointTools
2. Open the Microsoft.VisualStudio.SharePoint.targets file. You’ll find that this is an Xml format file that defines various configuration settings for building SharePoint projects
3. Find the TokenReplacementFileExtensions element and append svc to the list of file extensions as shown
<%@ Assembly Name="$SharePoint.Project.AssemblyFullName$"%>
<% @ServiceHost Service="MyProject.MyService" %>
Adding WCF service configuration to SharePoint
As well as an .svc file, IIS also needs to reads the configuration of the WCF service from the web.config file. For the purposes of this quick how-to we’ll make the necessary changes manually
1. Open the web.config file for our application (this will be found at C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\80\web.config if the application is the first application running on port 80).
2. In the system.serviceModel element add the following configuration details
<serviceHostingEnvironment aspNetCompatibilityEnabled="true" />
<bindings>
<basicHttpBinding>
<binding name="MyDemoBinding">
<security mode="TransportCredentialOnly">
<transport clientCredentialType="Ntlm" />
</security>
</binding>
</basicHttpBinding>
</bindings>
<behaviors>
<serviceBehaviors>
<behavior name="MyDemoBehavior">
<serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true" />
<serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="false" />
</behavior>
</serviceBehaviors>
</behaviors>
<services>
<service behaviorConfiguration="MyDemoBehavior" name="MyProject.MyService">
<endpoint address="" binding="basicHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="MyDemoBinding" contract="MyProject.IMyService">
<identity>
<dns value="localhost" />
</identity>
</endpoint>
<host>
<baseAddresses>
<add baseAddress=”http://localhost/_layouts/MyProjectName” />
</baseAddresses>
</host>
</service>
</services>
Note: In an ideal world we’d add some code to our SharePoint solution that would automatically add the appropriate configuration details to the web.confg file but that's a story for another dayWe’re now ready to deploy the service to SharePoint.
Note: In an ideal world we’d add some code to our SharePoint solution that would automatically add the appropriate configuration details to the web.confg file but that's a story for another dayWe’re now ready to deploy the service to SharePoint.
Note: In an ideal world we’d add some code to our SharePoint solution that would automatically add the appropriate configuration details to the web.confg file but that's a story for another dayWe’re now ready to deploy the service to SharePoint.
If you use Visual Studio to open a Web project that was developed for the .NET Framework 2.0, the .NET Framework 3.0, or the .NET Framework 3.5, Visual Studio can automatically perform all the changes to Web.config files that are required to be able to run using .NET Framework version 4. If the project is a local IIS project and you are using IIS 7.0, Visual Studio can also reassign the application to an application pool that is associated with the .NET Framework version 4
It is recommended that you use Visual Studio to perform the tasks that are required in order to upgrade. If you do not use Visual Studio to perform the upgrade automatically, you must manually edit the Web.config file and must manually associate the application in IIS with the .NET Framework version 4
Typically the procedures covered in this topic are sufficient for upgrading a Web application, because later versions of the .NET Framework are designed to be backward compatible with earlier versions. However, you should also look in the readme documentation for breaking changes. The behavior of a component that was developed for an earlier version of the .NET Framework might have changed in the newer version of the .NET Framework
Note:
Do not upgrade an IIS application if it has nested applications within it that target earlier versions of the .NET Framework. If an IIS application that targets the .NET Framework 3.5 or earlier is nested within an IIS application that targets the .NET Framework 4, the compiler might report errors when it compiles the nested application. This is because Web.config files inherit settings from files that are higher in the configuration file hierarchy. The .NET Framework 4 is backward compatible; therefore, a nested Web application that targets the .NET Framework 4 can inherit settings from Web.config files that are for earlier versions. But earlier versions of the .NET Framework are not forward compatible; therefore, they cannot inherit settings from a .NET Framework 4 Web.config file.
1. Open the Web site or project in Visual Studio.
2. If a Visual Studio Conversion Wizard welcome dialog box appears, click Next. This wizard appears when you open a Web Application Project or a solution. It does not appear when you open a Web Site project that is not in a solution
3. If you are converting a project, in the Visual Studio Conversion Wizard, select backup options and click Next in the Choose Whether to Create a Backup dialog box
Visual Studio upgrades your project file to the Visual Studio 2010 format. If you are upgrading a solution instead of an individual project, Visual Studio upgrades the solution file to the Visual Studio 2010 format
4. If you are converting a project, in the Visual Studio Conversion Wizard, click Next in the Ready to Convert dialog box
5. If you are opening the Web project on a computer that does not have the .NET Framework 3.5 installed, in the Project Target Framework Not Installed dialog box, select Retarget the project to .NET Framework 4 and click OK
6. If you are opening the Web project on a computer that does have the .NET Framework 3.5 installed, in the Web Site targeting older .NET Framework Found dialog box, clear the check box if you do not want to upgrade all Web sites or projects in a solution
7. In the dialog box, click Yes
Visual Studio updates the Web.config file. The changes that are made to the Web.config file are listed in the procedure later in this topic that explains how to update the Web.config file manually. Visual Studio does not update comments. Therefore, after the conversion, the Web.config file might contain comments that reference earlier versions of the .NET Framework
Visual Studio automatically sets the controlRenderingCompatibilityVersion attribute of the pages element to 3.5. You can remove this setting in order to take advantage of XHTML and accessibility improvements in ASP.NET 4. For more information, see the procedure later in this topic that explains how to update the Web.config file manually
8. If you are converting a project, in the Visual Studio Conversion Wizard, click Close in the Conversion Complete dialog box.
9. If the project is not a local IIS project, associate its IIS application with the Visual Studio when it is deployed to IIS. For more information, see the procedure later in this topic that corresponds to the version of IIS that you are using
If the IIS application is associated with the .NET Framework 2.0, the site will not work. ASP.NET will generate errors that indicate that the targetFramework attribute is unrecognized.
10. If the project is a local IIS project and the IIS version is 6.0, associate its IIS application with the Visual Studio by following the procedure later in this topic for IIS 6.0
If the project is a local IIS project, Visual Studio automatically performs this association. It assigns the application to the first available application pool for the .NET Framework version 4. If no application pool exists, Visual Studio creates one
Note: By default, the IIS 6.0 Metabase API that Visual Studio uses to assign and create application pools is not available in Windows Vista or Windows 7. To make it available, enable IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility Layer in the Windows Control Panel by selecting Programs and Features and Turn Windows Features On or Off. The following illustration shows the Windows Features dialog box
11. If the project includes code that accesses the HttpBrowserCapabilities object (in the HttpRequest.Browser property), test the code to make sure that it works as expected
The browser definition files that provide information to the HttpBrowserCapabilities object were changed in ASP.NET 4, and the changes are not backward compatible with earlier versions of ASP.NET. If you discover a problem and prefer not to change your code to accommodate the ASP.NET 4 changes, you can copy the ASP.NET 3.5 browser definition files from the ASP.NET 3.5 Browsers folder of a computer that has ASP.NET 3.5 installed to the ASP.NET 4 Browsers folder. The Browsers folder for a version of ASP.NET can be found in the following location:
%SystemRoot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\versionNumber\Config\Browsers
After you copy the browser definition files, you must run the aspnet_regbrowsers.exe tool. For more information, see ASP.NET Web Server Controls and Browser Capabilities.
Introduction
There is a lot of hype about claims based authentication, and unfortunately a lot of confusing jargon. Our goal in this post is to explain what claims based authentication means in plain English. This includes what it enables, and what it doesn’t enable. We are going to try our hardest not to use any technical terminology beyond the bare minimum.
ASPHostCentral.com, as the premier Sharepoint Foundation 2010 Hosting provider, proudly provides this article to any Sharepoint users and certainly we hope it can help you digest the new feature in Sharepoint 2010 Services. For those of you who are looking to host Sharepoint 2010, you can always start with ASPHostCentral.com as the cost is as low as $9.99/month only!
What is authentication?
Authentication is the process of determining if someone is who they claim to be. It answers the question “Who is this guy really?”
In the Microsoft world, authentication is usually performed by Active Directory. Foe example: I claim to be Tristan, and I prove this to Active Directory by providing my password. Other systems don’t trust me, they trust Active Directory. Active Directory gives systems a bit of data that says “yeah, I personally vouch for this guy. It really is Tristan.”
Now, if everyone used the same Active Directory installation in the same environment, then that’s all we would need. Claims based authentication is not needed in a simple environment like that
But in the real world, things are different. We face three big challenges:
- Privacy regulations and other pieces of legislation are impacting what kind of information we are allowed to capture and store about users, so in some cases we can’t just demand that people give us all of their personal details
- Businesses want to interoperate with other businesses, and government organisations want to provide more integrated services to citizens. However, different systems use different authentication systems (not everyone uses Active Directory, and even when they do, they have different instances.), and businesses want to integrate in a secure, legally compliant manner
What does claims based authentication do?
Claims based authentication is designed to address the two challenges mentioned above
Claims based authentication addresses privacy and other compliance concerns by requesting less specific, less personal information about people, and by trusting other parties or systems to do the “proof of identity” check
Imagine you have a “sell alcohol to public” ecommerce website, and you are in a country where there are only two laws, called Fantasyland. One of these laws says “alcohol may not be sold to people under 18”, and the other law says “people have a right to privacy and web sites aren’t allowed to track individual people”. (If the law was this simple in real life we wouldn’t need lawyers!)
We’ve got two competing concerns here. Firstly we need to ensure that a user is of legal age, while at the same time we’re not allowed to know who that user is! (Again, I blame the lawyers of Fantasyland).
It turns out that in Fantasyland, the Government has set up a web service that users log on to, which authenticates them based on their citizenId and citizenPassword. It then is able to tell other systems that a user is above 18 or not, without revealing who that user is
So we implement our “sell alcohol to public” website by building a claims-aware system. Instead of building the standard “username and password” login mechanisms, we simply ask the Government’s web service to tell us if the user browsing our site is over 18. The claim that our system uses is a “userIsOver18” claim, and the claim value is either yes or no. We simply don’t build any authentication system at all beyond a simple “if (userIsOver18) then..“ statement
By doing this, we address privacy concerns – we don’t know or keep personally identifiable information – while at the same time ensuring that we don’t sell alcohol to someone under 18
Claims based authentication addresses integration of different systems by allowing communications using open standards, and by providing a platform for developing more specialised ‘identity connectors’ between systems
What won’t it do for me?
Claims based authentication won’t address the lifecycle management of identity information. You’ll need a broader solution to that, but your solution may integrate with claims based authentication systems. How do you deal with new staff? How do you handle staff who are on long service leave? How do you handle fake accounts? Microsoft would like you to use their Identity Lifecycle Management application for this kind of thing
We are going to be a little controversial here, and point out what we believe the biggest limitation of claims based authentication. We believe that what enterprise customers really need is claims based authorization. Claims based authentication may let our system know that a user is a contractor from a partner company, but it alone won’t let me specify a rule that says “all of my company’s financial spreadsheets must not be seen by contractors”. Not only does claims based authentication not provide this capability, but neither do the role-based access controls provided by SharePoint. In fact SharePoint’s role-based access control model itself is too limited to address this. It still needs substantial improvements
The way industry is addressing this is by producing “entitlement management” systems, for specifying access control rules. Microsoft’s current solution, in my opinion, is strongly deficient in this regard. Yes, you can specify per item permissions for each individual financial spreadsheet. But this imposes such a high maintenance overhead that it is unworkable in practice. In my opinion companies like Oracle are well ahead of Microsoft in this field, but by no means does anyone have a complete turn-key solution
How is it implemented?
The claims-based authentication implementation has a number of components. In simplified terms here’s how the pieces of technology fit together
- From a developer’s point of view, the platform that Microsoft is providing is called the Windows Identity Foundation. This used to be called the Geneva framework. It provides a programming library suitable for building claims-aware applications. This library is also used by SharePoint 2010
- Active Directory Federation Services implements services to create, accept, and transform tokens that contain claims
- Cardspace provides a user interface for users to select which “identity card” they wish to use for a particular system
SharePoint is an incredible platform. It is all about a good return on investment for your clients. It lets you put together and deliver very compelling solutions with ease. It is thus not hard to imagine why a lot of clients get addicted to this good return on investment and misinterpret it as “Hey, it’s cheap!” and completely ignore long term planning of what they are addicted to
They might ignore, but you shouldn’t, and lucky for you there are well defined mechanisms to perform backups and restore of your SharePoint environments. In this article, We will talk about the various standard mechanisms available to you as a SharePoint developer or administrator to perform reliable backups of your environment
Backup using Central Administration
This is probably the simplest and most straightforward mechanism of performing backups and restores of your SharePoint installation. Under Central Administration à Operations, you would see an entire section for backup and restore as shown below
Over here, you would simply check-mark the portions of the farm that you intend to backup, and click on the “Continue to Backup Options” button. In step #2, you are presented with the following screen:
As you can see, this UI will let you specify a full or a differential backup, and all you need to do is supply a network location where the farm account has sufficient read/write writes, and your entire farm is easily backed up as a single file. You even get an estimate of what the backed up file size would be. This approach is dead simple, but the obvious problem here is that there is no straightforward way to automate this
Backup using stsadm
GUIs get me started on the basic tasks We need to accomplish to keep myself out of trouble. For instance, when We was learning SharePoint, We did realize that backup is an important aspect, and the dead straight UI made our learning curve a lot easier. But soon enough We got bored of performing all those clicks on a daily basis, so We wanted to script the backup process. As it turns out, stsadm.exe will allow me to backup individual sites and site collections very easily
In order to backup a site collection, you can use the following command:
stsadm –o backup –url <site collection url> -filename <filename to store backup>
Similarly, to restore a backed up file to a site collection, you may use the following command:
stsadm –o restore –url <site collection url> -filename <filename that has backup>
Similarly, to backup a single site, you may use the following command:
stsadm –o export –url <site url> -filename <filename to store backup>
In order to restore a single site at any URl, you may use the following command:
stsadm –o import –url <site url> filename <filename that has backup>
Seems quite straightforward, but there is more to it than meets the eye. For starters, backing up individual sites, isn’t exactly backing up a site. It queries the site using the object model and stores everything the site had that was exposed using the front end UI, into the given file. By default, you might miss older versions of files in a document library that has versioning turned on. You can however specify command line parameters to these commands to influence further control on how older versions are backed up. Also, this approach is quite arduous for a farm with a number of sites. Most of all, stsadm can error out at times, and the error can show up on command line, or even worse, the command line may tell you that it worked, but an error may show up in a log file somewhere. So even though this approach is scriptable, making it 100% bullet proof is still somewhat of a problem
Backup using database backups
This is probably the approach you will end up using most often. SharePoint stores all its data in SQL Server. Also, a site, or site collection, is nothing but data. Thus it is reasonable to assume that this data, can be easily backed up and restored using standard SQL Server mechanisms
SharePoint stores its data in content databases. A single website can have a number of content databases, and a content database can contain one or more site collections. In other words, you cannot scope a content database to a single site or single list level
You can view all the content databases associated with a given web application under central administration à Application Management à SharePoint Web Application Managementà Content Databases. This can be seen as below
From this screen, you can add or remove content databases to a given web site. When you add a content database, you have the facility of specifying a database server and a content database name. If the database already exists on the server, it will be used as is. If in case the database does not exist on the server, it will be created for you by the farm account
You can use this behavior to your advantage to backup restore web sites. In order to backup a web site, you simply backup all the content databases associated with the web application. In order to restore a website, you restore the content databases, and perform the extra step of specifying new site collection administrators in the new environment
This is a fairly robust mechanism of backing up and restoring your SharePoint environment and We suspect that in any serious installation, this is what you will end up using the most anyway. This by far, however is not enough. Depending upon the specific needs of your SharePoint environment, also want to invest in the following:
1. Backup the entire 12 hive (c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\web server extensions\12). This is because, frequently you will deploy code to your SharePoint farm, and you will need to restore the supporting physical files for the site to work properly
2. You need to keep monitoring the size of your content databases. If you start hitting the 50GB mark, think of splitting them up, so the backups are done overnight before users start hitting the database in the morning
3. Backup the entire INETPUB directory
4. Always maintain a path to restore the current state of the production environment as various releases are pushed into production. This can be achieved by following the below recommendations:
- Always use a scripted deployment process with clear instructions for deploying code to production. Give special attention to ensuring releases capable of taking your SharePoint installation from one version to another. With various releases, your scripts and instructions should be capable of taking a fresh SharePoint installation to the current production state
- Always deploy custom code as solutions, not fragile xcopy scripts
- Backup source control databases, and establish a strong version control policy for all code that goes into production
- Document all customizations and administration done under central administration for every release
- Follow standard disaster recovery best practices, such as regular and verified backups, off-site storage etc
- Backup Shared Service providers and Central Administration using stsadm after every significant configuration change or production release
Backing up shared service providers
You can backup and restore an SSP in a mechanism similar to restoring any other SharePoint website. You must however perform the additional step of associating the SSP with the appropriate web applications after such a restore has been performed. This may be achieved using the following steps:
1. Under central administration, click on the “Shared Services Administration” on the left side of the page
2. Once on the “Manage this farms shared services” page, click on “Restore SSP”.
3. Now assuming that you have already restored the SSP on a site, complete the required fields on the page shown. Just make sure that you specify the restored web application and database that the SSP site has already been restored to
Backing up search
Search is probably the weirdest portion to backup on a SharePoint installation. First of all, given the additional complexity that backing up search requires, it might be a good idea to go with rebuilding the indexes for small or even medium sized farms. However, if your search database is huge, and your farm is quite big, and you need search to be online shortly after a disaster, you will need to look into an appropriate strategy for backing up search
The reason backing up search is different than other portions of SharePoint, is because of how search works. Search data is stored in two locations, the search database, and the index files on the disk. You need both in order to be able to successfully serve search queries. Not only both, but you need both of them backed up concurrently for the restored versions to work together. In other words, if the search index was backed up 5 minutes after the search database, the index entries created in the additional 5 minutes will cause inconsistent results in the restored search
In order to ensure this consistency, you should backup search using SharePoint 2007’s backup tool, or a third party product
Conclusion
Backups are terribly important, do not ignore them. This article introduced you to various aspects of backing up your SharePoint farm. As you can see, you have a gamut of choices to pick from, and depending upon your environment you may want to pick the right combination of these choices that fits your needs the best.
The Data Platform Insider blog provides an overview of what's new in this first public CTP release for SQL Server 2008 R2. If you are reading this blog, you are probably interested in knowing what’s new in Reporting Services 2008 R2, and already in August CTP
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- Map and spatial data visualization
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- Report Builder 3.0
The most notable new Report Builder feature area already available in the August CTP is the so-called "server mode":
+ An edit session concept enables support for embedded data source credentials, relative references, and subreport references when connected to a report server.
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Reports are now also available in the ATOM standard compliant format that can be consumed by Gemini and other tools.
- AJAX Report Viewer
The August CTP provides a preview of some of the functionality that will be available in the stand-alone report viewer control with the upcoming Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 release. You will notice a more fluid navigation experience in August CTP
- Report Manager
Report Manager received visual and functional improvements with SharePoint-like interaction and menus.
-RDL Expression Language enhancements
We added direct geospatial data & function support, as well as three types of Lookup functions (Lookup, LookupSet, MultiLookup).
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