Comments on: Deploying the Master Page (Master Pages and SharePoint part 4 of 6)

By: Smriti singh

Smriti singh — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:34:18 +0000

Hi Ggalipeau,

Wonderful articles.cleared a lot of doubts about master pages in sharepoint. I didnt find the links to the last 2 articles in this series.Can you help me with that.
I also wanted to know how can we use skin files in master pages using SharePoint designer or if we can style controls using css only…

By: bdspurlock

bdspurlock — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 05:09:27 +0000

Hi, I'm fairly new to Sharepoint, but I created a masterpage in SharePoint designer and then copied it over into a VS masterpage so I could deploy it using STSdev. I deployed it and it works fine. But I get an error when I select my masterpage in the site settings. But when I go into Sharepoint Designer and make the master page Ghosted it works fine. Any ideas why?

By: neamattazi

neamattazi — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 13:41:16 +0000

I was able to figure it out. The reason was in the permissions of the feature folder. Since I created the feature folder by right clicking in windows explorer and creating it, it didn't have the inherited permissions of the main Features Folder so I had to right click on it -> properties -> security – > Advanced – > Permissions Tab – > check the inherit all permission check box and Voila it worked

By: neamattazi

neamattazi — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 16:47:00 +0000

I have a problem, I create it a master page based on blueband master page and then I deployed it using a feature. The feature gets installed and when i try to activate it, it tells me that it's successfully activated and then when i try to open the sharepoint site it gives me 403 forbidden. I then deactivate the feature and try again and i find that the files are there so I change the master page from the master page link and then it works. When for any reason an IISRESET is done to the server, my master page lose it's css that is applied to it and it loses its images.. Any idea what's the problem? Is it related to the feature itself? BTW: i used the same feature on a test server and it worked fine and it was activated and the site is working fine.

Thank you very much in advace

By: ggalipeau

ggalipeau — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:29:22 +0000

Hey Bill,
The best place to deploy CSS files is in the Layouts folder of the 12 hive (usually: Program FilesCommon FilesMicrosoft Sharedweb server extensions12TemplateLayouts). The interesting thing about the layouts folder in the 12 hive is that SharePoint creates and IIS path to that folder with “_layouts”. So, you can reference things in that folder by placing “_layouts/{path to css}” in your html.
Another option is to put the css files in the style library/list in the actually SharePoint site. This is a good option if you want to modify css directly in SharePoint.
I usually choose the Layout folder option for the following reasons:
1. It is real easy to deploy
2. It is how SharePoint does it's css files
3. There is some caching going on with that Layouts folder which can give you some performance help (but – this is minimal)

By: Bill Spencer

Bill Spencer — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 03:45:01 +0000

Hi Greg,

Great article. I have a master page ready but it uses a special css file in conjunction with core and others.

What is the best way to deploy my special CSS file and where? Should I list it in the elements.xml? I want the new master page (and it's css) to be available to all sites in the collection.

Thanks
Bill

By: ggalipeau

ggalipeau — Wed, 27 May 2009 18:51:27 +0000

Yes Cait,
If you edit it in SharePoint Designer it will get UnGhosted. But, if you just deploy it this way with a feature, then it will stay Ghosted. So, SharePoint Designer editing is what makes a file UnGhosted.
I think the best way to go for doing A LOT of customizations to master pages is either the route dicussed in this series (i.e.: packaging up a site definition – keep reading this series of articles to get to that) or using feature receivers (I didn't cover feature receivers in this series of articles because it was getting long). You make the decision of feature receivers vs custom site definitions based on whether you want to utilize the out of the box site definitions, of if you need completely custom ones to do other stuff like changing the zone configuration or the default lists and webparts.
Either way you will utilize a WSP package to do your deploy.
The packing up in a WSP to deploy is the best reason to use solutions over SharePoint Designer. The Unghosting aspect is a secondary reason. So, yes, I do recommend against SharePoint Designer for deployment reasons. However, I do use SharePont Designer to “design” my pages on a test site. Then, after I have finished designing them, I move them into this solution methodology so I can deploy to multiple environments.
Hope that makes sense,
Greg

By: Cait

Cait — Sat, 23 May 2009 00:54:45 +0000

Hi Greg,
Once you deploy the master page this way, it will get unghosted if you then try to edit it with SharePoint Designer, correct? And then you'll have a different version in the database than what you have sitting in the 12 hive? I like this method, but I'm trying to figure out what's the best way to go. I have A LOT of customization to do for the master page… And I want to make sure it's easy to deploy on Dev, Production, and in the future. Do you recommend against using SharePoint Designer for the master pages? Aren't there benefits to using it?
Thanks!

By: ggalipeau

ggalipeau — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 19:07:36 +0000

Hi Bill,
As the author of this article, I would like to mention it is a blog. And the blog prgram is what caused those #8220 in the view source. There is not much I can do about that, this blog takes articles from multiple different authors, so I have no control over the program. I would suggest you contact to owner of this site rather than leaving a comment for one of the participants.
As for the mistake in the previous article. I just have to appologize. It was a key stroke mistake. It had nothing to do with lack of knowledge around “English syntax”.
Also, just so you know, this is all community driven, it is not a pay site. I volunteer my time. It has helped a lot of people. And, writing in blog's is very hard to do. I don't know if you have ever used a blog editor before. They change symbols on you sometimes and they make it very hard to proof read. So, please be gentle on people volunteering their time. These kind of comments make people not want to volunteer anymore.

By: bill

bill — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 02:00:24 +0000

I don't mean to be abrupt, but it's my nature. It's good content, but since this is a "Magazine", I expect that an editor read this (contrasted with a blog): If you view source, all the #8220; #8221 and $8243; should be replaced with " so the code can be copied. In at least one case you have an unquoted XML attribute (xmlns=http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/).

The previous article in the series contained the sentence "Please not the intent of the above change is to show that the out of the box SharePoint controls can be changed." Do you mean 'note' rather than 'not'?

If you don't know English syntax, why should I trust your SharePoint syntax?

Really this is a subject I wan't to understand and I'll wade through it, you just keep forcing me to slam on the brakes as I read.

By: Anuradha

Anuradha — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 18:05:07 +0000

Cool . I leaned very quickly how to deploy master files via feature

By: Mark Vogt

Mark Vogt — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 03:48:47 +0000

Greetings esteemed co-Sharepointers,

If I might suggest, getting such lists is a snap using powershell.
I recommend a Google search for "Powershell Extensions for Sharepoint"..

Cheers,
-MV

By: Francois81

Francois81 — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 00:09:32 +0000

thanks for the replie(s) Greg. Good idea.

one suggestion since we get emails from comments made one comments : create a 1st comment for your new post and ask to comment as a reply to it. .. until they enable email notif for the blog writer

By: ggalipeau

ggalipeau — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:57:34 +0000

Hi john,
Sorry it took me so long to reply. I don't get emails sent to me when someone leaves me a comment here. I agree – it is cumbersome. But, there are actually good architectual decisions on why everything was setup this way. If you understand “every” situation in SharePoint, it actually makes sense.
One thing I do is set up all my plumbing in a solution. Then, whenever I go on a project, all I have to do is edit the master page and all the deployment plumbing is there for me. So, the cumbersome part was done a long time ago for me and I can concentrate on my customizations each time.

By: ggalipeau

ggalipeau — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:54:36 +0000

Hi Francois,
Sorry it took me so long to reply. I don't get emails sent to me from here when someone leaves a comment. I don't know of an stsadm command to do that. But, you can build your own stsadm commands or you could build a simple winform to do that. Then, all you would have to do is loop through the sites and sub-sites. On each of those objects (SPSite and SPWeb), there is a list property called Features. If the feature is in that list it has been activated for that site.
That will show you the activated features.
If you are just look for all the deployed features, that is easy too. You can loop through the feature list of the farm. Just get a reference to SPFarm and loop through it like this:
foreach (SPFeatureDefinition feature in SPFarm.Local.FeatureDefinitions)
That will tell you every possible feature definition that has been deployed on the farm (whether it is active or not)

By: john

john — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 01:29:27 +0000

Great article in a great series. However having to do all this stuff do deploy just one customized file is really frustrating. Programmers should employ more better their time, and designers should not having to do these kind od stuff just to change the layout of a site.
Thanks again

By: Francois81

Francois81 — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:48:35 +0000

Great article, and yes it was worth going thru this deployment way to understand the Site def one for me at least.

Question : is there a way to list all the deployed Features ?
sthg such as:
stsadm -o enumfeature -url http://mysitecollecitonpath
?
thanks.

By: ggalipeau

ggalipeau — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 03:47:25 +0000

Hey Mike,
The last article in the series will address it. But, your issue is around the onet.xml file. There is a “” node and a “” node in that file. You have to put the feature id of your feature in one of those (depending on if it is a site or web feature.
Hope that helps,
Greg

By: mike

mike — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 09:00:06 +0000

Greg,
Good stuff. Question. I wrapped this up as a solution (.wsp file) using wspBuilder. It deploys cleanly into sharepoint, but the feature does not show up to activate/deactivate on the site. Do you know what I could be missing?
Thanks

By: Charles

Charles — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 19:41:06 +0000

Hi,

Thank you for this great article.
In the 11th step in the "Create Feature" paragraph, you missed filling a link. See {insert link here} tag.

Regards,