In this short & quick article i’ll show you a shortcut way to manage webparts in your MOSS site, with the use of URL query strings and parameters.

To open the Design Bar – Useful for pages in the Pages Library
http://www.yourwebsite.com/default.aspx?DisplayMode=Design

To turn on Web Part Zone Editing 
http://www.yourwebsite.com/default.aspx?ControlMode=Edit

To Correct or Remove Misbehaving Web Parts
http://www.yourwebsite.com/default.aspx?Contents=1

To Open the Page in Web Part Design Mode, or to add/browse webparts
http://www.yourwebsite.com/default.aspx?ToolPaneView=2

To Open the Search Web Part Zone, or to add/search webparts
http://www.yourwebsite.com/default.aspx?ToolPaneView=3

in addition, you could pass a second parameter to specify the pageview mode

Example(1) – if you wanted to edit the Shared view of the default page:
default.aspx?mode=edit&PageView=Shared

Example(2) – if you wanted to Browse web parts and add them to your Personal view:
default.aspx?ToolPaneView=2&PageView=Personal

Long time i know, but really its a busy life.

What i want to present today is a little trick about saving your SharePoint site as a template, using the magic ”/_Layouts/”. specially when you want to save a sub site as a site template, so when you navigate to the site settings of this sub site, the option to save site as template does not appear.

So the tricky way to do this is by editing the URL of your SharePoint site by entering “/_layouts/savetmpl.aspx” at the end of it, like http://www.YoursiteURL.com/_layouts/savetmpl.aspx

After that, a webpage will appear asking you to enter TemplateName (will be saved as .stp file), and the name of the template to appear when you create a new website from that template.

And by doing this action, the template will be saved as a .stp file in the Site Templates Gallery in the parent website, found under Site Settings >> Galleries >> Site Templates.

I think that you will run into a situation where you want to pull data as an XML format out of your SharePoint list some day, and to be honest i’ve found alot of ways pulling out the data to be viewed as XML.

Here i want to share this simple way to do this using  the great functionality of a file called owssvr.dll. and as a brief on this dll, i can say that the owssvr.dll file serves as the backbone of the SharePoint function. This is because the owssvr.dll file is the module that runs the mechanism for ‘export to spreadsheet and open with access’ options on the list Actions menu of SharePoint

So to get started, Simply format the following string to form the request URL:

http://{yoursite}/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?Cmd=Display&List={list GUID}&XMLDATA=TRUE

where:

1. {yoursite} : is the url of your site, which could be the root site of any child site.
2. {list GUID} : is the GUID of your list.

So as an example of this request URL would be 

http://www.microsoft.com/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?Cmd=Display&List=729ECA77-58B6-4739-9F50-9AE05D1FADAC&XMLDATA=TRUE

And you will get the XML view something like this:

In addition to viewing a list using the Cmd=Display command in the URL request, you can also return all data for a SharePoint list, but based on a specific view from that list, by adding the &View={ViewGuid} to the URL request, like the following:

http://{yoursite}/_vti_bin/owssvr.dll?Cmd=Display&List={list GUID}&View={ViewGuid}&XMLDATA=TRUE

where: {ViewGuid} : is the GUID of the list view.

The response for a simple view looks like this:

Notes:

- To find the GUID for a list, just go to the Settings page for the list and copy it from the URL. (see below)

• What every SharePoint administrator needs to know about Alternate Access Mappings (Part 1 of 3).
• What every SharePoint administrator needs to know about Alternate Access Mappings (Part 2 of 3).
• What every SharePoint administrator needs to know about Alternate Access Mappings (Part 3 of 3).

Icon sets are themed differently from animals to office space or finance icons. And, a set named “Must Have Icons” which includes 59 icons is a nice fit to be used in web applications.

All sets come in 7 popular sizes: 16*16px, 24*24px, 32*32px, 48*48px, 64*64px, 128*128px & 256*256px.

They are free to use in personal & commercial projects (a link back is required).

Scenario
- You have an old content database (mdf/ldf or a backup) that you want to use as a content database for a new site collection.
or
- You want to create a new site collection, and to use an already existing content database (that holds your old data) for this site collection.

Assumption
- At the back-end SQL server you have a content database (in this example i will name it WSS_Content_Web1) attached to the SQL server, that is not linked to any site collection yet.
or
-At the back-end SQL server you’ve created a new database (in this example i will name it WSS_Content_Web1) using SQL management studio and restored a backed-up content database to it, to be used as a content database for you new site collection.

Steps
I will refer to this content database as WSS_Content_Web1, and the site collection as http://www.xyz.com/Web1

What we are up to do is:

1. Create a content database using Sharepoint central administration.
2. Create site collection that will use this content db.
3. delete this content db.
4. use STSADM to link this newly created site collection to the existing content database (in this example i will name it WSS_Content_Web1) in the back-end SQL.

So let us start:

1. Launch “SharePoint 3.0 Centeral Administration”, and under the category “SharePoint Web Application Management” Select “Web application list” then select the web application that will contain the site collection.
2. Select content databases, and click to add a new content database, name it WSS_Content_test and click ok.
3. Create a new site collection, name it Web1. (notice that the new site collection will be attached to the newly created content database (WSS_content_test).
4. Go back to the link “content databases” and delete the content database you’ve created “WSS_Content_test”.
5. Launch Command prompt (CMD) … Start > Run > cmd and hit enter.
6. write the following command line:
   Stsadm –o addcontentdb –url http://www.xyz.com/Web1 –databasename WSS_Content_Web1
7. press enter to execute the command.

Go and browse to your newly created site collection, and enjoy.

notes:

1. The STSADM tool is usually located in the following path (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN).
2. For details about using the command addcontentdb visit this article in TechNet Addcontentdb: Stsadm operation (Office SharePoint Server).

On their home page, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 is to announce the release of their new SharePoint 2010 Server.

Keep your eye on it, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 Website, and here you can take the sneak peek (Click Here)

Remember my post ”Publish Your .ASPX Page With Code Behind To SharePoint 2007“, here is a simpler way of creating no code behind aspx page in SharePoint2007.

Here we will go through 3 steps:

1. Build a simple aspx page in Visual Studio 2005 (with no separate code file).
2. Tweak the SharePoint Web application Web.config file to accept running codes.
3. Copy the aspx code to a new aspx page in SharePoint.

So lets start:

Building the aspx page

1. open up Visual Studio 2005 or 2008, and make a new web site name it whatever.
2. add another aspx page to the web site, but here uncheck the checkbox titled “Place code in separate file“.
3. open this aspx page, and switch to design view.
4. drop a TextBox, name it txtHello, and drop a Button name it btnHello.
5. double click the btnHello command button.
6. in the btnHello_Click protected sub, write this simple line code
7. txtHello.text = “Hello World”. run your web site to test if every thing works fine.

Modify the web.config file of the SharePoint Web application:

1. Open your Web application web.config file (which is found in this path –> C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\xxxx   , the xxxx is the port number of your web application but in most cases for the default website its 80).
2. add the following lines to the web.config file, directly inside the <configuration> <SharePoint> directive and save.

<SafeMode MaxControls=“500“ CallStack=“false“ DirectFileDependencies=“10“ TotalFileDependencies=“50“ AllowPageLevelTrace=“false“>

Here i will go through bundle every thing in one MOSS2007 installation folder, including MOSS2007 Setup, WSS v3 SP2, microsoft office sharepoint server2007 SP2 and the cumulative update (15 july 2009) for both WSS v3 and MOSS2007.

To get started, we will need the SharePoint 2007 installation media, the SP2 for both WSS and MOSS, and the latest Cumulative Updates for both WSS and MOSS. so here are the links for downloading SP2 & the latest CUs:

• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 (SP2) – English 
• The 2007 Microsoft Office Servers Service Pack 2 (SP2)
• June Cumulative Update (CU) for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
• July Cumulative Update (CU) for Office SharePoint Server 2007

To begin make a folder named c:\MOSS2007, and copy the MOSS2007 installation files and folders into it. (the folder will look similar to the following pic)

Notice that theres a folder called Updates , here we will extract the SP2s and CUs files. as follows:

1. open up command propmt . start > run > cmd.
2. extract the four files (SPs & UCs) by writing EXTRACT command as follows depending on the path of each one (i prefer to put them all in one folder in the C:\ root to narrow the extraction command statement):

- c:\wssv3sp2-kb953338-x64-fullfile-en-us.exe /extract:c:\MOSS2007\updates

- c:\officeserver2007sp2-kb953334-x64-fullfile-en-us.exe /extract:c:\MOSS2007\updates

 - c:\wss-kb968850-fullfile-x64-glb.exe /extract:c:\MOSS2007\updates

- c:\office-kb968851-fullfile-x64-glb.exe /extract:c:\MOSS2007\updates

And after completing the extraction proccess for all files, you shall notice that the Updates folder will be filled with many msp files, also you will notice that there are two DLL files named svrsetup.dll and wsssetup.dll, you must delete the file wsssetup.dll because its causing a Setup Error (Language not supported by your system), and conflecting with the other file svrsetup.dll.

Now you are ready to install a complete fully updated MOSS2007.

Recommended installation sequence for updates

Also if you are making a separate Updates installation, like say you have MOSS already installed, and want to update to Service Packs 2 and cumulative updates, then Microsoft enforces the installation order of service packs, but does not enforce the installation order of packages or patches. You can install packages or patches in any order you want, so long as every server in your farm is updated to the same level when you are done. In addition, there is no requirement to install an update unless your servers are affected by the problem described in the KB article for the update.

Although Microsoft does not enforce the update installation sequence, we recommend that you install the post-RTM updates for Office SharePoint Server that you require in the following sequence:

Important:
Remember to run either the SharePoint Configuration Wizard or Psconfig.exe at the command prompt on every server in your farm to complete the update. You are not required to run the SharePoint Configuration Wizard or Psconfig between each step in the sequence. You can to wait until all updates are installed on a given server before you run the SharePoint Configuration Wizard or PSconfig.

You can download the package from here :

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=0a87658f-20b8-4dcc-ad7a-09ad22641f3a#tm

And the good thing here is that they are packaged as a solution.

And here are the instructions

Download the installer Run the installer and accept the End User License Agreement Once installed locate the Ten Themes for SharePoint in the start menu You can view all the themes at once by choosing the AllThemesPreview.jpg Locate TenThemesForSharePoint_March2009.zip in the start menu Uncompress the ZIP file to obtain the ten theme projects Load one a selected project in Visual Studio 2008 Use VSeWSS to deploy the project to view the final theme

For those who need to download the new sharepoint themes as a single WSP visit this link:

10 SharePoint Theme WSP