Great website! There seems to be lots of content.

I wonder how you managed to get ALL deliverables including sites and pages under source control. Of course it is the way how it should be done but it is not easy to do it that way with MOSS.

Another interesting feature of your website is accessibility in MOSS. Not very easy too but very necessary these days.

>> ALL deliverables including sites and pages under source control, it is not easy to do it that way with MOSS

It isn't easy at all! We were working with a custom site definition and features so we decided to develop a windows form app which automatically deploys the site defintion and features as a Solution. Once deployed it automatically creates a Site Collection on a web application specified.

Once the site has been created, our custom 'Site + Pages' creation code is run on the site by our windows form app, the code reads from a custom XML file and then  creates 'Sites + Pages'. The XML file even contains Page Field data.

So this creates the site structure, ready for the content authors so they don't have to create the subsite structure.

Everything else, such as deploying Documents and Images you can do with a Feature

Deploying List templates and features can be done with a list feature

BUT The problem is that once content authors start creating sites and pages, there is no way to export that content back-out so we can put it into source safe, we need to develop even more tools for that =o(

Developing tools like these can greatly increase your development productivity. BUT they take a heck of a long time to develop, and so they are only worth building your own, if you are likely to work on many similar types of projects in the future.

Of course, it would be nicer if Microsoft developed all these tools for us, instead of leaving it up to the community!!!  But MOSS is MASSIVE so MSFT have PLENTY of work to do :)

Great looking site - clean lines - great design - easy to access information

Sezai,

Nice site. I had a question on "Most of the website is configurable via use of site lists, including header and footer links, home page service profiles and facility features".

I have looked into this also. How did you go about doing this?

Pingback from  Links (10/25/2007) « Steve Pietrek’s SharePoint Stuff

>> How did you go about doing this?

>> configurable via use of site lists, including header and footer links

Data to support elements in a web site that are common to a 'page' are stored in page fields, but elements common to the entire site can be stored in Custom Lists in the root web of the site collection.

So create custom lists to store the data, for a 'Header Links' or 'Footer Links' control you simply need a list with a Title field, to store the text of the link, and a Publishing HTML Link field to store the URL target of the link, this also provides a nice asset picker of the site. I developed the list as a custom list definition, so I could enable the 're-order items' tool that only appears for 'Links Lists'. Then develop web parts, server controls or user controls which programatically access the data in these lists, then render out the HTML that is required to display that specific element.

That's it, then your site authors simply need to navigate to those specific site lists to configure them, add or remove items, edit existing items, delete items etc. and it controls and modifies various 'global' elements in your site. To make it easier for content authors, add a custom site action menu link to your custom list so they are only two simple clicks away from configuring the site List.

Sezai,

Thanks for your notes. Today I went ahead and did exactly as you instructed. Create a simple user control which reads a "Footer Links" list and displays the links. The user control is registered on the master page.

Brilliant, thanks for the tip!

No worries Steve, glad I could help out.

but yeh it's really quite easy to do, and the code for your custom controls is actually quite small, only a few lines of object model code to access the site list and read out all the data from the list items.

I love Lists, they make SharePoint Development easy and actually more productive than standard ASP.NET development

MOSS - "Least Security" Principel forgtten?

I'm concerned that MS is not putting enough emphasis on setting up security correctly for a MOSS 2007 infrastructure.

It seems no training classes or documentation clearly defines what permissions are given to Local svr groups, Domain Svr Groups, and to SQL Account Logins to each database created in SharePoint\MOSS.  

For example MS recommends what appears to be 13 seperate accounts to set up a secure Sharepoint Infrastructure- don't beleive me, see go.microsoft.com/.../LinkID=92883&clcid=0x409    

If your a SharePoint Administrator I've created 2 spread sheets that can document the security you've assigned to each "MS recommended" account at all 3 levels: Local svr groups, Domain Svr Groups, and the SQL Account Logins to each database, HOWEVER, I don't have the expertise yet to finish filling it out.  I can send you a copy up on request.

Is there anyone who has used MS's least security principle when setting up their SharePoint\MOSS\Project 2007 Svr environment?  Who has the knowledge to fill complete the MOSS 2007 security spreadsheet? please contact me.

Thanks

Mark Mills

Mr M Mills1@ yahoo.com

Sr. MS Systems Engineer

Houston TX

(US) 832-748-1156