Custom navigation Elements in Portal Header

One of the first things most portal administrators try to do is modify the navigation bar at the top of the default portal page and insert their own links. Although this element appears to be a web part it is actually an ASP.NET server control - compiled code that cannot be modified. You really only have two options if you want to preserve the formatting and layout of the header without sacrificing it's dynamic capabilities: 1) Write your own ASP.NET control to replace it, or 2) Use SPS Areas and some creative HTML to work around it. Since I'm no .NET expert, I'll show you how to do the latter and leave the former up to the real programmers.

Here's how to add a new link within the header navigation:

1. Create a new area and set it's location to 'Home'.
2. Be sure to leave 'exclude from portal site navigation' unchecked.
3. Navigate to the new area.
4. Open the default page in Frontpage 2003.
5. Switch to code view and locate the first 'meta' tag.
7. Insert a meta refresh tag with the appropriate destination URL (click here for an example).
8. Locate the first 'Form' tag.
9. Delete all the code between this tag and the closing Form tag at the end of the page.
10. Save the page back to the portal.

You should see the link for the Area you created in the the header navigation bar. Click on it and it will take you the new default.aspx page which, having been modified to execute an instantaneous redirect, will now take you to the original link.

Hey, it ain't pretty, but it works!!!

Implementation Prerequisites

This is just a list to remind me of all the things I need to include in a new portal implementation but I thought others might find it useful (if you're not sure what something is, post a comment and I'll provide a link):

• Advis SiteNavigator Web Part
• Custom Data View for Company News Area
• MSDN Recycle Bin Code for Document Libraries
• What's New Web Part
• RSS Feed Reader
• iFilters (PDF, Visio, MHT, etc.)
• Win2Go STS Admin GUI Tool
• Application Center Test (ACT)
• Office 2003 Web Parts
• SmartPart for Sharepoint

Update 1: How could I forget the Contoso Search Box control? This is a MUST HAVE!

Sharepoint Discussion Groups

Let's face it - the Discussion Group feature in Sharepoint is not the greatest in the world. Yes, it's functional, but for those of us used to spending a lot of time on BB's, it just doesn't measure up.

Until someone releases full-fledged BB software for Sharepoint the best bet is customizing the existing list template. Serge van den Oever has a good implementation that he's been kind enoug to share with the community. Check it out and let him know if you like it.

Portal Navigation Web Parts

Several vendors have released web parts that provide simplified navigation within portal and WSS sites. In my opinion, the best one is SiteNavigator from Advis. It has more features and options than any of the other parts I've tested and is easy to implement.

While it is fairly simple to retrieve a list of sites and subsites from SQL or query the webs.asmx web service, displaying a nested, hierarchical tree of site based on user permissions is an altogether more difficult task. Microsoft has made this information available via the Sites property of the Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPSiteCollection object. Unfortunately, this object must be invoked by an account that has local administrative access to the Sharepoint server. Advis provides a handy impersonation feature that allows the part to function as an administrative user but this displays all sites, even those the user does not have access to, thus defeating the overall purpose of the web part.

Fortunately, local security policies can be used to meet the administrative requirement of the SPSiteCollection object without completely compromising network security. First, create an AD group for all non-administrative users (place your admins in a separate group). Next, add the SPS users group to the local administrators group of the Sharepoint server. Finally, set the 'Deny Log On Locally' and 'Deny Log On Through Terminal Services' settings in the local security policy (along with any other exclusions your environment may require). You may also wish to disable administrative file shares.

This method will allow each user to see a nested tree view of the sites they have permissions to access. The web part may be implemented on any SPS or WSS site via the web browser Add Web Part function or added to the left-hand navigation pane using Frontpage 2003.

Proxy Server Bug Crawling External Sites

In some implementations, the Sharepoint Search Service will fail to crawl content sources with fully-qualified domain names (such as http://www.anyserver.com) but will crawl internal sources using NetBIOS name resoultion (http://anyserver) . Although there has not yet been any confirmation from Microsoft, this appears to be a bug in SPPS. To work around this issue, perform the following steps:

1. Go to Sharepoint Portal Server Central Administration
2. Click on 'Configure account and proxy settings'
3. In the Proxy Server Settings section, click on the 'Use the proxy server specified' radio button.
4. Enter an IP address (it does not have to be a valid address as you will be bypassing it entirely).
5. Enter "80" in the Port field.
6. Check the 'Bypass proxy server for local (intranet) addresses' box.
7. In the 'Do not use proxy server for addresses beginning with:' text box, enter "http://*". This will bypass the proxy address for all HTTP requests. You may enter additional exclusions for HTTPS, FTP, etc. by separating each entry with a semicolon.

Note: Advanced users may recognize the "http://*" entry as the same setting available in the inclusions property of a content source; however, assigning this to a content source or index will not work - it must be assigned in the Proxy settings.

Sharepoint Admin Permissions Hotfix

Microsoft has just released a hotfix for the domain admins permission issue in SPS 2003. Refer to the following KB article (you'll need to open an issue with Microsoft to get the hotfix).

Sharepoint Backup and Restore

Here's an excellent article on backing up and restoring your SPS databases.

NOTE: The Sharepoint Backup and Restore Tool is in the /bin directory of your sharepoint web (i.e. c:\inetpub\wwwroot\sharepoint\bin).

Web Part Verification

This is an exellent article on testing web parts prior to deployment. Good information for those of us who like to crank out a quick part and move on to the next problem. And we wonder why our phones are always ringing...

Sharepoint Branding

Here's a great article from Daniel McPherson on branding Sharepoint sites.

Sharepoint Adviser Live Conference

The Sharepoint Adviser Live Conference 2005 is being held June 12-16 in Las Vegas. I've never attended one of these events but the schedule and conference sessions look promising.