It is worth noting though guys that according to Microsoft you shouldn't be using site definitions unless you fall into a couple of rather specific examples, basically saying that if you want to ensure compatibility of solutions going forward with future versions of the product that site templates are the way to roll.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa979683.aspx Now having said that, I'm still a fan of site definitions (and I'm sure we could launch into the seemingly never ending debate of how you manage and deploy stuff in the SharePoint world, but I'm not gonna go there). There are some problems I have found with working with site definitions in Visual Studio 2010 - basically I did run into a problem where when I made changes to the onet.xml file and deploying from Visual Studio the changes didn't stick until I restarted the box. I tried restarting services, restarting VS, all sorts of stuff, but it just wouldn't fly. So if you do start using Site Definitions with VS2010, be aware that there are some tricks it will play on you. Regards, Brian Farnhill Microsoft SharePoint Server MVP Microsoft Virtual Technical Solutions Professional Blog: http://blog.brianfarnhill.com<http://blog.brianfarnhill.com/> | Twitter: @BrianFarnhill<http://twitter.com/BrianFarnhill> | Mobile: 0408 289 303 ________________________________ Canberra SharePoint User Group: http://www.sharepointusers.org.au/Canberra SharePoint Saturday Events: Sydney<http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/Sydney> | Canberra<http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/Canberra> | Melbourne<http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/Melbourne> From: ozmoss-boun...@ozmoss.com [mailto:ozmoss-boun...@ozmoss.com] On Behalf Of Sezai Komur Sent: Tuesday, 1 February 2011 7:05 PM To: ozMOSS Subject: Re: best practice for site templates Yeah if you need to be able to create site collections and sites from the SharePoint UI, (create Site Collections in Central Admin, or create Subsites when in a site collection) and you want your custom template to be displayed and selectable on the screen, then you need to implement a custom site definition. OR Investigate feature stapling to site definition ids - this ensures your custom feature is activated when out-of-the-box site definitions are used to create sites. Develop your features to do the branding, site building etc. etc. whatever you need to do to the site. OR Develop Features to do the work, Then train users how to activate features manually on the site after it has been created? Site Admins can do this in the SharePoint UI without having to learn or run PowerShell. There's many ways to approach this depending on what you specifically require. Sezai. On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 2:52 PM, Maxine Harwood <maxinetechg...@gmail.com<mailto:maxinetechg...@gmail.com>> wrote: Thanks. Restricting the sites once they are created isn't a high priority. I need to create lots of sites each with a consistent branding and custom libraries. If I use publishing to apply the master pages, I can't export as a site template. I can't seem to find a recommended way of producing multiple sites, based on a template (containing lists, libraries, custom views, master pages and css etc). The best solution I can find uses power script and I am concerned that this will mean that I will be the only person in the organisation who'll be able to create new sites, when the local site admins should have this functionality from the UI. Anyone got any opinions on custom site definitions. From: ozmoss-boun...@ozmoss.com<mailto:ozmoss-boun...@ozmoss.com> [mailto:ozmoss-boun...@ozmoss.com<mailto:ozmoss-boun...@ozmoss.com>] On Behalf Of Prashanth Thiyagalingam Sent: Tuesday, 1 February 2011 4:42 PM To: ozmoss@ozmoss.com<mailto:ozmoss@ozmoss.com> Subject: RE: best practice for site templates You can restrict the Site Templates and Page layouts used by Subsites via UI or PowerShell. If you need to do this in the farm level you could lock down the default templates in the farm and force the administrators to use your custom template/site definition, could be done via a feature (eventhough changing webtemp.xml would do the job but not a recommended way) ________________________________ From: maxinetechg...@gmail.com<mailto:maxinetechg...@gmail.com> To: ozmoss@ozmoss.com<mailto:ozmoss@ozmoss.com> Subject: best practice for site templates Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2011 15:53:30 +1000 Been researching for a while now and have finally decided I need advice. For my client I need to create a series of custom team sites (40+) with custom branding applied, subsites, custom lists/libraries and views etc. In order to apply a custom master page in SP2010, I have enabled the publishing feature (any ideas how to go about customising master pages for non-publishing sites?). Unfortunately by (MS) design, enabling publishing disables the ability to save the site as a template (which was to be my solution). http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/sharepoint2010general/thread/8c669cb5-6d27-4911-9c32-30943d2c64de So my question is, what is best practice to achieve a consistent site look and feel for multiple sites. MS blogs indicate that attempting to create a template using _layouts/savetmpl.aspx is not supported and doesn't work with customised css (I tried :(). The same blogs suggest using a custom site definition. This make administration easy as I can create a custom "DisplayCategory" that anyone with permission will have access to and provide all of the custom site definitions in there. I think this will work for me but found heaps of sites suggesting this is an upgrade nightmare.... Last option is to create a PowerShell script to do it all, which I am happy to do (and makes it easy to create some of the custom views I have in mind), but I am concerned that future users or administrators wont know about this script (i.e. they might just start from a blank site template instead of using the script). Any suggestions or alternatives??? Thanks Maxine Harwood | Solutions Architect Red Box IT 0410 525 989 | 07 3056 1725 (VoIP) www.redboxit.com.au<http://www.redboxit.com.au/> max...@redboxit.com.au<mailto:max...@redboxit.com.au> ABN: 96 189 767 742 | ACN: 125 489 278 _______________________________________________ ozmoss mailing list ozmoss@ozmoss.com<mailto:ozmoss@ozmoss.com> http://prdlxvm0001.codify.net/mailman/listinfo/ozmoss _______________________________________________ ozmoss mailing list ozmoss@ozmoss.com<mailto:ozmoss@ozmoss.com> http://prdlxvm0001.codify.net/mailman/listinfo/ozmoss
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