Comments on: Incorporating a Master Page into a SharePoint site definition

By: Jay

Jay — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 10:57:35 +0000

Greg, Very good article. Help me a lot in understanding the site definition. But after deploying the solution when I try to create new site collection, it give me error message "Unknown Error". I have doubled checked the procedure you provided and everything is to be exactly the same as per your demo sample.

Please advise on what could go wrong.

Thank you in advance.
Jay

By: F1.net » Blog Archive » Sharepoint MasterPages

F1.net » Blog Archive » Sharepoint MasterPages — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 23:43:45 +0000

[...] http://sharepointmagazine.net/technical/development/incorporating-a-master-page-into-a-sharepoint-si… [...]

By: Tukaram Thatikonda

Tukaram Thatikonda — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 01:32:35 +0000

My solution compiles but it gives an error when I try to deploy.
:
Install and deploying DemoProject.wsp
Unable to deploy solution
Inner exception(1): Name cannot begin with the ‘%’ character, hexadecimal value 0×25. Line 1, position 2.
:

I followed the exact steps but not able to figure out in the XML file, the character that is causing this error.

Could we have your code for download? So I can compare my xml files with yours and find the character that is causing the error.

By: Adele

Adele — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 14:52:46 +0000

Hi there,
I'm trying to create a team site definition that automatically applies my custom master page, called custom.master. I have created the master page as a Feature (as per Heather Solomon's blog), and I have activated it in my top level site collection. The top level is a Collaboration Portal.

When I try to create a new site based off my team site definition, I get the following error:
Failed to instantiate file "custom.master" from module "CustomMasterPage": Source path "custom.master" not found.

Here are the relevant pieces of my ONET.xml file:

<....>

I have changed my ONET file many times,including trying and this displays the same error as above.

I'm stumped as to how I can get the team site to use the master page from the site collection level, and naturally I'm under heavy time constraints. Can you set me in the right direction?

By: ggalipeau

ggalipeau — Wed, 27 May 2009 22:11:25 +0000

After further review, I found that you are right CyberJP. The siutation in which that ~SiteCollection will work is very limited. I should have used the more generic approach for this article to cut down on confusion.

Change the Onet.xml configuration section to this:

I tried doing something fancy with the ~SiteCollection and it only worked for very specific situations. This is much more general and will tell the path to look at the root level site collection for the master page. Sorry.

I've asked the editor of SharePoint Magazine to change the article for me when he has a chance (because he is the only one who can)

By: ggalipeau

ggalipeau — Wed, 27 May 2009 22:08:50 +0000

The WSP version shouldn't impact the project.
I am not sure why you are getting that error. There was an issue with the walkthrough, which I have asked the editor of SharePointMagazine to fix. Try fixing the error by changing the Configuration section of the Onet.xml to:

However, I am not 100% convinced that will fix your particular error because nobody else has reported that specific error message. And, I couldn't reproduce that message either. So, you might have other issues with your solution. Maybe a step was missed or mistyped. I am not sure. Tell me if the fix above helps. If not, maybe I can look at your code for you.

By: ggalipeau

ggalipeau — Wed, 27 May 2009 22:03:51 +0000

Barak,
I found the issue with the Walkthrough for certain situations. Change the Onet.xml configuration section to this:

I tried doing something fancy with the ~SiteCollection and it only worked for very specific situations. This is much more general and will tell the path to look at the root level site collection for the master page. Sorry.

By: ggalipeau

ggalipeau — Wed, 27 May 2009 21:19:14 +0000

Hi Raghu,
Yes, I just followed the steps on a WSS site and it didn't work. Instead of using ~SiteCollection in the Onet.xml, try this instead:

By: wang

wang — Fri, 15 May 2009 14:15:36 +0000

it display the error: failed to instantiate file “default.master” from module “defaultmasterpage”: source path “default.master” not found when I create the sitecollection in central administration by your method.
the wsp version will impact the project?

By: Raghu

Raghu — Tue, 12 May 2009 02:05:59 +0000

Hi ,
I have a quick question i am unable to get the custom masterpage to pickup does this ~SiteCollection is used in MOSS only or can we use this in WSS 3.0?

Thanking you in anticipation