Back intoSharePoint

A great addition to a SharePoint administrator's toolbox are Gary Lapointe's custom STSADM commands (comands, source code and Powershell vesions available at SharePoint Automation).

His commands are still dependent on the underlying Microsoft API's, however. And especially the ones concerning content publishing are somewhat prone to having bugs, and require paching and hotfixing.

For example, you need to apply the two hotfixes KB939592 and KB939654 to solve a versions problem for both the standard STSADM export/import command as well as for his custom exportlist/importlist commands.

Windows Live Writer

In an attempt to write blog posts here somewhat more regularly, I've decided to install Windows Live Writer as an offline tool to type and collect my thoughts before posting. The latest beta (which it apparently still is) for Windows Vista and XP can be downloaded at the download page.

It also connects to Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) weblogs (which is something we have available inside the firewall at the company I work for), so I will try it out against that platform as well.

(And, of course this post is written using Live Writer.)

Office 2007 Beta2TR available

Microsoft has the "Beta 2 Technical Refresh" of Office 2007 available. To install this build, go to the Office Preview site. The Beta2TR build is available there at no cost. Please read the information found on Office Preview and on the Office Online readme pages carefully before taking action.

You should also check out the Sharepoint Developers blog before upgrading any Sharepoint installations.

Moving WSS (sub)sites

Today, I was asked at the company I work for, "is it possible to move a site from one location in the Sharepoint hierarchy to another".

For example, say a site is at http://server/sites/sales/cars, would it be (easily) possible to move it to (say) http://server/sites/sales/products/cars.

Some searching of the documentation and the web later, I've come to the conclusion that yes, it is possible. But it's not all that easy, as you cannot easily drag-and-drop a site from one location to another.

So, what you do, is:

• make sure no-one is using the site.
• create a new (sub)site at the new location, but make sure not to initialise it (i.e. cancel creation at the point where you would usually choose and apply the template).
• back-up the original site, using smigrate.exe (use -h to get all the options).
• restore the site to the new location, using either smigrate or stsadm.
• delete the original (I personally would make it read-only, or admin-only, until it's certain the new one is working correctly).

Of course, there are other ways to do the same (using Frontpage 2003, for example).

An even easier way is to acquire SMove for SharePoint, a utility that takes the pain out of backing up, restoring and rearranging SharePoint Sites. Features include a UI for backup/restore, modifying SharePoint properties and other common SharePoint administration tasks. SharePoint sites can be moved and your taxonomy rearranged using Drag and Drop in a rich context sensitive TreeView. And at GBP 90, it's a steal.

Links:

• SharePoint 2003 "smigrate.exe" to backup and restore workspaces (note: site is having trouble)
• How to move a Windows SharePoint Services Web site from one server to another by using FrontPage 2003
• Triplewood - SMove for SharePoint

Web Content Management Links and Resources

Andrew Connell posts a page of links and resources specific to Web Content Management (WCM). WCM part of a larger Enterprise Content Management (ECM) strategy that's part of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007. MOSS is built on top of Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) v3.

Different languages for WSS v3 / MOSS 2007

One of the questions around here was will there be a Dutch version of MOSS 2007?

The answer is yes, but not during the Beta2 / Beta2 Technical Refresh timeframe. There definitely will be a Dutch languagepack / server install once the RTM / retail version is there.

The Sharepoint Team blogged about it on their weblog.

From their article:

Language packs are available to install on WSS only, MOSS, MOSS for Search, Office Forms Server, and Project Server installations. For MOSS, MOSS for Search, Forms Server, and Project Server installations, the Office server products Language Pack (a.k.a. ServerLanguagePack) needs to be installed; this will take care of all sites. The WSS Language Packs (a.k.a. SharePointLanguagePack) are for WSS stand-alone installations.

At this point, there are English, Japanese, German, French and Spanish installs / languagepacks. So, as I said above, no Dutch yet.

.NET Rocks!

Other people would call this a podcast (and / or set it up as a podcast), at Microsoft this is called An Internet Audio Talk Show for .NET Developers, which I just recently discovered.

It can be found at http://msdn.microsoft.com/dotnetrocks/ .

The August 16 installment talks about SharePoint technologies including SharePoint Services 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) for over 1 hour.

NOTE: They're at show #190 now.. it's a long-running show :)

Kick-off

This is the kick-off of a new blog powered by the new version of Blogger. It will be co-authored by Herman and Peter and will reflect the findings of our common research endeavours. The main topics covered will be Sharepoint and all Microsoft products.

Enjoy!