Comments on: Developing a Custom Master Page (Master Pages and SharePoint part 3 of 6)

By: Deploying the Master Page (Master Pages and SharePoint part 4 of 6) | SharePoint Magazine

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:44:14 +0000

[...] Developing a custom Master Page for SharePoint. [...]

By: ggalipeau

ggalipeau — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:48:59 +0000

Hey Anita,
I do the hidden panel thing all the time, so I don't think that is your issue. Unfortunately, I have never seen this issue before. A good place to ask questions to get maximum value is through the msdn forumns. There is a forumn specifically for designer located here: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/s...

By: ggalipeau

ggalipeau — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:47:06 +0000

Hi Giles, sorry, haven't seen this one either. Sounds like there are some networking issues with your server that has Designer on it. Try the forum I mentioned to you before, it is a good place to ask questions.l

By: ggalipeau

ggalipeau — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:46:00 +0000

Hi Giles,
I am sorry, I haven't seen this issue before. You might want to try the msdn forums for designer: http://greggalipeau.wordpress.com/2008/01/21/de...
There are a lot of good people there who have seen many different issues.

By: Anita

Anita — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 12:57:54 +0000

I was wondering if anyone who has created a custom master page has had the experience where visually everything seems to work, but when you edit an article page within the new template….it does not save the changes made.

I have the site actions button working, I click edit page, I type new content into the article, I choose exit edit mode. Looks good. But if I reload the page (navigate off and on to it again), the old version is still there.

Is there any specific control that I might have hidden (placed them at bottom of the template in hidden panel anything not wanted to display on interface) … that could be affecting saving of content ?

By: Fodi

Fodi — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 14:26:28 +0000

Well, I'm not going to ask for any help. I just wanted to say thank you
I'm a SharePoint developer, studying for 70-541. Deploying Master pages via features is one of the topics covered in the exam and I needed a quick refresher. Your article was very helpful as I couldn't find this topic covered in the SDK.

Cheers.

By: Giles

Giles — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 21:24:01 +0000

It has managed to throw up an error that means something fianlly:

ID: 7, Application Name: Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer, Application Version: 12.0.6211.1000, Microsoft Office Version: 12.0.6215.1000. This session was terminated unexpectedly.

Anyone know what it means?

By: Giles

Giles — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 21:18:18 +0000

Hi Greg,
I do not know if anyone can really help me with this one as it may be an internal network issue but in the hope you or any of your collegues have come across it before I have the following problem...

I have been using SPD to customize the master pages in my site - all was going well and then we decided to make the portal accessible from outside the network on a SSL. We eventually gave up on that plan and went back to the option where users VPN into the netwrok to gain access.

Our server farm was working fine and then the minute we did all this changing about with SSL trial certificates we lost the ability to save changes to the MasterPG. The SPD client simply comes up with a dialog box " Web File Properties" "Verify document properties..." and then eventually decides to tell me the Server connection has timed out...

Any help on this one would be much appreciated.

Giles

By: ggalipeau

ggalipeau — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 03:00:07 +0000

Hey Bikram,
There are a few ways to do what you are suggesting. What I usually do is create custom site definitions for each kind of site. These site definitions can have references to different master pages. Then, when someone goes and creates a site, they just have to pick the correct site definition from the choice of templates on the create new site page. The last article in this series explains how to create site definitions. This might seem overkill, but you can get a lot of other benefits from using site definitions including turning features on or off depending on the site definition chosen. Anyways, that is what I typically do.
Good luck,
Gregt

By: Bikram K Bhuyan

Bikram K Bhuyan — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 06:55:25 +0000

Hi Greg,

I have the following requirement which might be very basic to you. But it will be good if you could provide some pointer to this.

1. I have created a WSS site in which I have created a new master pages based on my sites's look and feel and created most of the pages. This is working fine.
2. There are 10% of the pages which does not fall into the standard look and feel. Like many pages has content without the any header and footer etc.

Could you please suggest how to create these 10% of the pages which does not follow the normal master page structure.

I guess I need to create multiple master pages. But not sure how to use the other master pages as when I create a new pages using the "Site Setting" option it takes the default master page.

Please provide some solution to this issues.

Thanks,
Bikram.

By: ggalipeau

ggalipeau — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:45:41 +0000

Hi Janajit,
The best way to do this is to create a custom site definition and activate it from there. So, when a new site is created from the site definition it will also activate the correct features. I will be showing this when I do the final article of the series.The basica process is to add the GUID of the feature to the onet.xml file in the site definition.
However, you might want to attach a feature to a non-custom site definition (i.e.: one of the out of the box ones). Or to one you have already deployed and don't want to change. Well, there is a way to do this also. It is called feature stapling. I would suggest searching the internet for feature stapling. There are a lot of good articles on it.
Hope this helps,
Greg

By: Janajit

Janajit — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 02:37:28 +0000

Hi Greg,
I will bother you once more.All your previous suggestions were so helpful.I want to have certain fetaures activated by default when I create a site collection.Is there a way to do this?

By: ggalipeau

ggalipeau — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:27:05 +0000

Hi Janajit,
You might want to post these kind of issues to the msdn formuns for SharePoint: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/c... . There are lots of MVPs and SharePoint enthusiasts like myself that answer questions there.

By: ggalipeau

ggalipeau — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:25:15 +0000

Yes, you don't want to modify anything in the 12 hive directly. There are usually other ways to do these things through adding new custom features.

By: Janajit

Janajit — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 02:14:20 +0000

I am facing another problem Greg.This time its to do with custom groups and permission levels.I want to create custom groups and permision levels.In order to accomplish this I am using an XML config file for specifying custom groups and permission levels and I am using SPFeatureReceiver to create the custom stuff during portal creation by referring to this feature from my onet.xml. The problem is even though I am using Properties["vti_associatevisitorgroup"] = group.ID.ToString() to hide Visitors ,Members and Owners(default groups), these are persisting after the collaboration portal gets created.Whats really beats me is its all working finne with team sites.The problem is cropping up for the collaboration portal alone.Please help me out.I am in a bad stuck.

By: Janajit

Janajit — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 02:08:59 +0000

Well I did modify the files in the features folder ie I modified the Publishing,PublishingResources and SiteSettings features(Changed tags in associated xml files) .So what you are suggesting is I create custom featurs and modify them?

By: ggalipeau

ggalipeau — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 01:00:41 +0000

Hey Janajit,
You said you modified the manifest files – do you mean you actually modified files in the 12 hive to do this? Or, did you accomplish this in another way (i.e.: wrote a new feature or something else)? The reason I ask is that you shouldn't modify files in the 12 hive. If you didn't do that then your approach is fine and you should be able to remove the custom action changes by changing the custom feature again.

By: Janajit

Janajit — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:43:23 +0000

Hi Greg,

Thanks a lot for your suggestion.I managed to hide the link in another way though.I modified custom action settings in the manifest files of SiteSettings,Publishing and Publishing resources features to drop the links.What do you think about this way and the next question that arises is Can I add the links back for a particular site collection once I have dropped them by modifying the aforesaid features.Could you please suggest a method to unhide the links which I dropped using customaction tags of Sitesettings, Publishing and PublishingResources features.

By: ggalipeau

ggalipeau — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 02:03:25 +0000

Hi Janajit,
Sorry it took me so long to reply, I have been away for a few days. Anyways, I would suggest doing this with permissions. You shouldn't give anyone permissions to get to that link if you don't want them to do that. Even if you want to give people Admin permissions, you might want to consider making a custom Admin permission group that can do everything except this.

By: Janajit

Janajit — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 23:44:52 +0000

Hi I its a great article.I have one question however.I have designed a custom master page without using the designer.Now since I do not want users to be able to tinker with my custom master page in any way I want to disable the master page selection link in Site Actions>> Site Settings>>Look and Feel>> Master Page link.How can I do that? Could you please help me?