I’m fortunate to have a very good friend – no not imaginary… At 15 he introduced to me to a great sport called basketball which along with the culture, the writers of the sport, the music and of course the players became a major influence in my life – I still follow it now, but after last season, I had to question my faith… not in the sport but in the team that I follow(ed?) – the Phoenix Suns.

They’re exciting, they’re great to watch and have a great run and gun mentality.  But…

I can’t help thinking that there’s some muppets in the organisation.  This isn’t a new thing – back in the day when KJ and Barkley were in the team they were good, very good, but then KJ retired, Barkley went and things changed.  Even at this early age, something felt not right.

Fast forward a few years and things seemed to be improving there were some good trades and new players came into the team but they always seem to trade off players – make them good, give them the experience and get rid of them – most notably Shawn Marion – the team were coming together nicely and then Shawn was traded for… Shaq.  Huh?  Also D’Antoni going as well seems a blow.

The last trade they had as well was the same.  It’s something that I can’t understand.  Something else was different as well which became clear in the playoffs last year.  That was watching the Boston Celtics.  The difference between the two teams was startling and it wasn’t in skill level.  It was in the attitude and the energy.  Phoenix has always been an energetic team but Boston were in another league (literally!).  It caught me by surprise.  In Game 4 (I think it was) LA Lakers looked like blowing out the Celtics.  It was a 30 point lead and it seemed that it was game over… something niggled me.  The Celtics won, the niggle was confirmed.  Boston were going to be champions.  It was only after the Celtics had dismantled the Lakers in Game 5 that doubts starting to form about my feelings to the Suns.  It wasn’t glory-hunting but more passion seeking.  I’ve got no doubts about the Suns players but now I’m starting to look east, where the sun rises…

So now it’s a predicament, do I leave the Suns and follow the Celtics?  Do I stay loyal to the Suns?  From a winning point of view it wouldn’t be a contest as last night can attest.  The most telling comment:

“It was a good ol' spanking. That's what is was,'' said Suns coach Terry Porter, who called it his team's worst loss of the year. "They came out and turned on the intensity on us early and we didn't respond. They got whatever they wanted. There was no resistance from us whatsoever.''

It’s sad to see.  I’ll follow both teams as I have a lot of respect for Boston, and a loyalty to the Suns, but if the finals are Suns Celtics, then the Celtics will be who I root for…

Yesterday was a crappy day in the world of games news journalism – 1Up was sold by Ziff Davis Media to the Hearst Corporation and will be merged with UGO Entertainment.

This 1UP News Story painted a pretty positive situation whereby it seemed that ZD were relinquishing their hold on this valuable IP to a group where money and other resources would be more freely available.  This seemed a good thing as the News Story also states that 1Up IS the people:

“"The acquisition of 1UP, with its authentic voice, tenured editorial personalities and bustling user community…”

This is what drew me (as I’m sure many others would agree) to the site and to it’s written, audio and video content.

Unfortunately UGO entertainment didn’t…  Joystiq reported here about the number of staff members being laid off – including Shane, Philip, Nick and Anthony as well as many other.

UGO takes a different approach to it’s games “journalism” as Shawn Elliott twittered: http://tinyurl.com/7ngh6b

This is a big shame as all the quality Podcast and Videos show content as they were have now stopped and EGM is no more.

Hopefully UGO will let the people they have kept do what they did best and hopefully will do what they can to keep the spirit of this site going.

Some former members have created RebelFM (and a site called Eat-Sleep-Game) to aid the blank empty space left.  check out their first episode here.

It’s probably best to finish off with a link to someone who knows 1UP very well – check Jeff Green’s post on Greenspeak.

It’s a well known phenomenon (do, dooo, do, do) that Sports Stars (primarily North American sports) have a very bad year after they appear as box art for Video Games.  This has been given the name the ‘Madden Curse’ for the Madden Sports franchise – the Gamezone site also has a list of unfortunate stars here.

Well, I’m wondering if this predominantly NFL issue is jumping sports.  I bring to the table Top Spin 3 – the cover of which is below…

So you will notice there’s a few people on the front cover, the main one being Mr. Federer the number 1 ranked player in the world.

The game was released in June… he lost Wimbledon, the next open and major tennis tournament, his rank dropped from #1 in the world to #2 (still not career ending, but all the same)…

All of this may, of course, be a total coincidence, but you can’t help wondering why bad things happen when sports stars appear on game covers…

Denon make some quality stuff – predominately around the AV space and cinema equipment.

It’s also fairly expensive as well – probably for good reason too (can’t tell you first hand that they’re brilliant but we’ll take their words for it!).

They’ve done cables before but they have decided that it is time to when the foray of RJ45 cabling.

Well, here’s the cable:

First impression is that it looks very good – if I needed to get hold of a cable then hey, why not… except for the cost.  Yup $499 for a 1.5m cable… yea- no!

I wired my whole house for 10% of that!  I respect Denon, they’ve make some good stuff – but to be honest even if you didn’t want to make you’re own cables you can pick up LAN cables for less than $10 (about £5) that will do EXACTLY the same as this cable for, quite literally, a fraction of the cost…

(NOTE: the intention was to complete this before posting, but it’s taking a little longer than planned ;-) )

Channel 4’s slightly hit and miss comedy IT Crowd has been going for 2 series with the third one in progress at the moment.

I’ve watched the the series (not being a fan of football and a geek) as i do enjoy and feel that there’s a sense of loyalty!

One thing you can always guarantee that Roy wears some top notch Tee.

So, because I’m a geek, (or this may be straying into nerd territory) here’s a list of the T-Shirts and where you can get them from…

(Update: Looks like someone has already done some of this already – glad it’s just not me!!!)

Series 1:
1 – RTFM Tee – here
2 – Space Invaders 10 Points Tee: www.space-invaders.com – at the time of writing the store is temporarily closed – hopefully it will be open again soon.
3 – Lightning Bolt T-Shirt: here
4 – The PacMan Tee: here
5 – Crossed Electric Guitars:
6 – Number 42 T-shirt: here

Series 2:
1 - Orange TV:
2 – I see dumb people: here; robot using a computer:
3 -
4 -
5 -
5 – Details found here
6 – Guns don’t kill people, Ballistics do – seems to be a tricky one to find -

Series 3:
1 – Music you like T-Shirt (also have have look here)
2 – Details found here
3 -
4 - OverLook Hotel: http://www.lastexittonowhere.com/tshirt/012/
5 - Filthy Panda: http://www.genkigear.co.uk; Laugh this off: http://www.ekmpowershop2.com

Over a year ago I decided to rip up the carpets of the main bedroom of our new house, the landing and then take up some floorboards.  Why would I do this? Well it was to take on the task of laying some network cables in some of the rooms in the house.

My loving and wonderful wife, backed me with this, but did go to her parents with our kiddie with the words 'just don't destroy the house' as she left…

The house is still standing, there are four network cables laid in the lounge, and one in our bedroom.

The purpose was to provide a network infrastructure round the house – yeah I know wireless networks are pretty good these days, but to have the potential of a 1 Gig (i.e. high speed) and reliable network connection… well, no contest.

I spent about a day (8 hours) over two days installing the cables. Unfortunately the only thing that would work with the cables downstairs were the laptops – My XBox, Desktop computer or other equipment didn't work.  Yesterday I got it all working.  Here's the setup I went through and some tips if you want to try this as well as the problems I faced. I won't cover about lifting floorboards or drilling holes as each house will differ and need a different approach. So without further ado...

Tools and Materials.

There are certain things you will need:

1. Crimping Tool – used to prepare cables and fit RJ45 plugs to the end of cables.
2. Cable Stripper – some crimping tools have these built-in but you can damage the actual cables if you're not careful. Cable Strippers are a bit safer.
3. RJ45 plugs – needed to plug into your equipment!
4. Cat 5e cable – this is pretty much the standard cable used and can be used to get speeds up to 1 Gigabit speeds.  You could also get Cat 6 if you wanted to but Cat 5e will get your HD files around your network just fine! These usually come in boxes of about 300 meters.
5. Network Punch tool – used to place wires into a network outlet/module or patch panel – this is an optional tool that may not be needed depending on the Network outlets you purchased.
6. Network testing kit – this comes in two parts, one that is powered and another smaller part which is not.  This is a VERY, VERY useful tool as you will find out later…

All these tools can be picked up on Ebay pretty reasonably – have a look around and see what you can find.

There are some hardware components that you will need as well:

1. A Router – used for internet access for your network.
2. A switch - used as a central point for your network to plug into.  You could also use a hub but these work in a different way.
3. A Patch Panel – This is an optional component depending on how you want to plan your infrastructure.  With a Patch Panel the bare wires go directly into the patch panel.  The other option is to put an RJ45 plug onto the end of the cable which goes directly into the Switch.  Patch panels would be useful if you need to have network separation – not likely within a home environment.

 Planning.

The main thing to do with anything like this is planning – you may not be in the position to lay cables easily (i.e. your house isn't in the process of being built). Here's the process I followed:

1. Consider what equipment will be used in each room – e.g. the lounge uses laptops + XBox + [Future] Blu-Ray = 3
   Dining Room uses laptops = 1
   ETC.
2. Once you know how many connections you may need, you can then plan where your outlets will be – this may be dependent on where your equipment is located in the room as well as accessible points in the room.
3. Plan for redundancy – always lay more cables in case you need to add a socket or one of the cables fail.
4. Choose a central place for your network.  Make it as central in the house as possible as this will help the routing of cables.  Also you may have to ensure that there are power requirements for the location as well if you already have a location where there already infrastructure like telephone or television.
5. Be prepared to do the house in sections – if you know that you will be decorating a room then do the cables for that room at a later point.

One thing to do is draw up some room layouts and materials list.  OneNote is extremely useful for this.  Once this is done you can start putting codes on each network port to ensure that it is easily identifiable for your network – e.g.

Bedroom 1 = B1
Network Port  = A
Network Port = B
Network Port  = C

This way you can see B1A and know which cable this is at your hub as well as in the room. This is especially important for troubleshooting.

Finally you will then need to measure up each cable run.  This helps in two ways:

1. You know how much cable you will need to purchase.
2. You can check that your cables do not exceed the maximum cable length (which is 100 meters).

If your cables do exceed the length you may need to consider your switch location or use two switches and then join the 2 networks together.

The final thing is to try and plan for all the cables to follow the same physical path - this means that hopefully you will only have to pull up a few floorboards or drill holes in wall!

Laying the Cables.

Firstly make sure you have a lot of time – it should not be under-estimated how much time is needed for this as there are some things that can be issues that you cannot be found until actual installation.

Start by making sure that there access to the Network cupboard is clear then start with one room and lay the cables from the one room to the Network Cupboard – don't connect any plugs or ports just yet.  Also mark each wire with the code. Follow the procedure for each cable.

Connecting the cables

This is the area that has tripped me up for about… a year!  Part of it was down to bad instructions with the ports and network modules, part lack of information and also part my stupidity! 

The infrastructure should follow a 'straight through' principle and not cross-over (see link below in the instructions) BUT it is not as simple as that. This was the big issue that I hit.  I was using Siemon equipment and network modules.  On the back of the Network outlet it handily had the pin layout – my mistake was that I put the same pin configuration on the RJ45 end as well.  When I plugged in the RJ45 into my switch and the main part of my Network Tester (the powered part) into the outlet, I found that only 4 of the 8 pins were transmitting but couldn't figure out why – especially seeing my laptops worked on the ports but nothing else did.

It took a looong time to figure out what the problem was – and this is where my knowledge also failed me.  At the time I didn't realise that you could plug in the secondary part of the network testing tool to the other end of the cable (I thought it was used to convert from RJ45 to RJ11) – d'oh.  This I only found out last week.  When I plugged it in the other end of my Network Cable I had an interesting experience – the signal at the other end jumped around the pins instead of following sequentially… After the testing and figuring out which cable needs to go to which pin, here's the cable to pin configuration I found out worked:

* This is the configuration on the Siemon Network Jacks that I used – this may have been updated or in fact may vary completely to other brands.
** The RJ45 used THE standard that has been defined by and for the industry – not the Siemon cabling standard.

What I've outlined above doesn't seem to be documented anywhere – not on the Siemon site, not generally on the Internet.

There are two really important tips that I would give to anyone doing this:

1. If you are putting an RJ45 connector on the end of a cable, always use the industry standard configurations (doesn't matter if it is the A or B but whatever standard you use, BUT you must use the same standard on both ends) – the order of the cables doesn't matter if you are creating a patch cable but it will for the infrastructure. I would recommend using the configuration for everything. That way you can eliminate one issue when troubleshooting.
2. For connecting to network ports or patch panels follow the guidelines on their equipment. If they are different to the industry standards stick with what the company is using.

Regardless the network test tool is your best friend. Once you have installed the outlet plug a (working!) patch cable into the outlet and connect the powered part of your network tester. On the RJ45 end connect the secondary part of the cable. There are two things that you are looking for:

1. Each of the 8 lights should light up throughout the test (not all at the same time) on each the main tester and the secondary unit
2. The lights should follow a numerical sequence (1-8) on each part of the tester.

When testing check first all lights on each end light up. Next check the sequence on each end – first check the outlet and then check the RJ45 end.

You can follow this procedure for each cable:

1. Choose your cable standard
   There are 2 Network Standards for cables – choose one and stick with it. 
2. Install the back box for the outlet.
3. Follow the pin guidelines on the Network outlet or module.
4. Follow the Industry Standard for the RJ45 end for the switch end.
5. Use a network tester to confirm each pin.
6. Fix the outlet to the back box.

Do this for each port and cable until your ports are all installed. Once this is all done you can connect your router to your switch and then start ensuring that the machines have Internet access and also (if required) can talk to each other.

Troubleshooting:

The Steps that I took for my issue was:

1. Plug in both ends of the Network Tester Tool – the Powered part connected to the Network Port with a patch cable and the second part connected to the RJ45 end at the switch.
2. Turn on the testing tool and watch at the outlet end that each of the 8 lights come on in turn.
3. Check the receiving end – if there are any problems you will notice it here with the sequence. If the sequence is out you will need to redo the cable. Using a table like the one above proves really helpful.
4. If you followed the correct mapping on the network outlet/module then it will probably be an issue with the RJ45 end – in which case use the outlet as the fixed point to test against. In the case of the table above only the right hand side should change.
5. Make a note of the order the pins go through the sequence (there is usually about a 1-2 second delay between testing all 8 pins). For example I found the order of my pins at the receiving end was: 2, 1, 3, 6, 5, 4, 8, 7.
6. Map the sequence against the coloured pins and then reconnect to an RJ45.

Other Resources:

Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_5_cable

Patch Cable Creation: http://www.make-my-own-house.com/cat-5-wiring-diagram.html

Jack Wiring how-to: http://www.make-my-own-house.com/rj45-wiring.html

About Ethernet Cables: http://www.ertyu.org/steven_nikkel/ethernetcables.html

NOTE: you will notice that each of these pages show different wiring orders for Patch Cables and Network outlets – this is where things can get really messy if you're not careful. If you remember the two important tips, you should be fine:

1. Always follow an industry standard on an RJ45 Connection
2. Always follow the pin layout on the back of a network outlet/module

  This is a great home project which can be very rewarding when it all comes together and works. Enjoy!

I finally got round to updating my test environment to Windows Server 2008, SQL 2008, Exchange 2007 and SharePoint 2007 in the last week and it's a sweet setup - very nice and slick.  One issue I did fine was with the installation of Visual Studio 2008.

*Quick 101 aside...*
For SharePoint development VS2008 needs to be installed on a server with Moss 2007 installed as well...

Knowing that the installation of Visual Studio can take a while I locked my machine (being the good security-conscious person that I am) and went off for breakfast.  I came back to find my installation had failed... hmmm.  So what was the issue? Could have been the disc - (a downloaded version from MSDN and burnt to DVD) but it didn't feel like it should be the disc.  So I started the install again... and it worked.

I would say that I need to do a bit more testing but it looks like you may have an issue if you kick off an install on a VPC and then lock your physical machine.  Something that may be worth keeping in mind if you have some software that will take a long time to install...

You may realise sooner rather than later than later that I'm new to this whole development thing - but it is something that I'm trying to get into.  The issue that seems to be bothering me is 2-fold: being involved with SharePoint means a lot of technologies to develop against and the second is the feeling that instead of starting in the shallow end I seem to be jumping in the pool so that the water just about covers my head... (Oh and before you say well start in the shallow end - the problem is I can't find it!)

With the aquatic analogy out of the way let's more on to InfoPath.  I've done a couple of projects with InfoPath and they have show the product to be very handy for processing and creating forms.  Looking at an issue this week about creating a submit button that isn't attached to a fixed location I came across and handy guide here.  Very handy, but try step 2 with an out of the box version of InfoPath and you get an unhappy message - you'll need to install VSTA (Visual Studio Tools for Applications) with a 'handy' guide of how to do it.  Except not really.

It will guide you to go to the add/remove programs, select your office installation, select change and select it.  The problem is that it isn't completely obvious where it is.  Finally this post on MSDN gave clearer directions.

So before you do funky code things in InfoPath, ensure you install VSTA - and to do that, select change on your Office 2007 installation, select Add or Remove Features (and press continue) and navigate through the InfoPath hive:

NOTE: When you first fire up the code sections you may get this error:

Error :

Infopath cannot add the event handler
Infopath cannot create the visual basic or C# project
The location for the visual basic or C# project cannot be found or cannot be accessed.

Please have a look at this blog which may help OR I found that I was using a copy of my form which was renamed (which you can do when publishing the form).  Ensure that the naming is correct.

There's a couple of big events going on at the moment which bring two interests of mine together.

The first one is PDC or The Professional Developers Conference - basically lots of top notch developers get together and talk shop.  Usually there's loads of good announcements come out of the event - for example Microsoft Azure - the Cloud Computing Operating System (looks like the marketing guys have come up with a funky name at long last!!!).  For the Twitterites amongst us there is a twitter feed for the event as well: @PDC2008.  Keep on the look out for other tidbits as well from the event - even maybe some SharePoint news!

The second event is the London Games Festival.  This is a yearly event where loads of gaming people get together and have a laugh and see all the new funky stuff that's coming out.
There's lots going on from now all the way through to November 7th including exhibitions, showing off new games, competitions as well as the Eurogamer Expo which is starting today and running through until tomorrow.

I was passed this from a colleague at work and thought it would be worth sharing. 

http://searchenginerapbattle.com/

Take:

Released: 2002

Go to IMDb page

Information © IMDb.com

8 Mile

Eminem, Mekhi Phifer, Evan Jones, De'Angelo Wilson, Taryn Manning, Proof,

Add:

Google.

Yahoo.

MSN.

Out the other side you get a nice little chuckle.  Not sure if this was sponsored by one of the big three or if the devil skated to work this morning and all three banded together, but whatever, watch and enjoy.

  News just in on TechRadar…

Adam Hartley has reported that an initiative on helping us to keep our Keyboards, mice and workstations clean.  Dr. Hillary Jones (he of GMTV fame) is spearheading a campaign to highlight the germs located around our work areas.

The story can be located here: TV doctor slams germ-riddled keyboards | News | TechRadar UK

I’ve seen a few broadcasts of Dr Hillary on the telly and he seems a pretty level-headed guy – he certainly doesn’t get caught up in hype and over-sensationalise stories.

As at today we are in the middle of Computer Cleaning Week (warning – Site has sound on page load so check your speakers!) which has a lot of info around what is lurking on our tech as well as how to clean it.  It is worth thinking about and considering what could be on your keyboards.

With my gaming hat on you have to wonder what germs are currently residing on my 360 Controllers.  Time to get the Dettol out methinks…

I had this question asked of me recently (well, yesterday) and found this post on a blog called Lois and Clark which covers off some interesting stuff on URL Limits in SharePoint – here’s the quote:

“Recently, we've had some discussions about the question whether the SharePoint 260 character URL limit is still in effect in SharePoint 2007. We thought we might write a little blog post about it providing an overview of some facts about SharePoint size limits...

A site name is allowed to consist of a max length of 128 characters.

You can create multiple sub sites but the maximum URL length of a sub site is 237. This length excludes the part apparently reserved for system files and folders. If you try to create a new page the system path /_layouts/newsbweb.aspx is added to the URL, which makes a total of 260 characters.

After reaching that limit, you can still add lists and have subfolders in them. The max length of a doc library name is 255 characters. The max length of a folder name is 123 characters. The max length of a SharePoint URL including lists and folders is 256, excluding system files (for example, /Forms/AllItems.aspx).

The max length of a SharePoint URL does not include the querystring portion. The max limit of the querystring portion depends on browser limitations. For example, MSIE 6 supports a total of 2047 characters (almost 2K), FireFox doesn't really seem to have a limit.

To make our testing a little bit easier, we wrote a little tool called the 'URL Length Checker'. Everybody is welcome to download it and use it within their own test scenarios. The tool requires the presence of the .NET 2.0 framework. Download the URL Length Checker or download it's source. “

The tool is does pretty much what it says on the tin and is fairly basic (it doesn’t need to be complex!).  If posted a screenshot below so that you can get some idea of what it looks like…

Following on from a previous post we actually have the details now of the new 360 dash update that’s coming this fall – full details of update can be found on Major Nelson’s site http://majornelson.com/archive/2008/07/14/some-of-the-features-in-the-new-xbox-experience-8-person-chat-vga-plus-more.aspx but more specifically the E3 press conference showed us the new Dashboard interface.  See below to see the dash (sans wallpaper backdrop) in action:

So what are your thoughts of this in relation to the article in my previous post?  Some things to consider…

• Interesting that no advertising is seen in a big way on the dash – this could be something to look out for.
• Very much more stylised considering the old dash.
• Certainly a change for the better.
• One of the major complaints was navigating the volume of content that could be on a console – the live arcade being the prime example – doesn’t seem to be addressed in these videos.  It will be interesting to see what happens with this.

Still, looking forward to this and seeing what can do…

This is a very interesting article on some work an independent podcaster/gamer did on the  dash.  You could argue to the cows come home about the design and if it’s good or not.  The really interesting thing is how much of the screen estate is taken up by each component.  The scary thing is the 36.5% unused space on the dash – there’s a lot of of potential there. 

Not too surprised at the advertising space – this is becoming big business for a lot of people, not only Microsoft.  I wouldn’t be too surprised if this was increased…

Gaming Culture: Dream 360 Dashboard

Any one who has ever had any interest in Lego ever in their life needs to have a look at Gizmodo trip to the Lego Factories (link below).

Highlights include:

A vault containing every single Lego set ever made… ever!! Link here

The Death Star MADE FROM LEGO!?!!!!?!!!!

Check out the whole trip and the vids at: Legotrip - Gizmodo

In the first part of this series I gave a quick intro in to the tools and went through the initial planning stage about creating a site definition.

Now the Next step…

Step 2: Installing the Software

Before any definitions can be created, you need to ensure that your environment is set up.  To use either version of the SharePoint Solution Generator you will need to have Visual Studio installed and also a copy of SharePoint.  This has to be installed on a server environment but van be either virtual or physical.

The Solutions Generator is packaged as part of the Visual Studio 2008 SharePoint Extensions (currently at version 1.2) and this can be downloaded at this Microsoft Site.

The system requirements for installation of the SharePoint extensions are:

• Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2003; Windows Server 2008

• The following is also required:
  • Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (Basic installation only), or any product built on Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
  • Visual Studio 2008 (Standard Edition, Professional Edition, or Team System)

As an aside there are also some other parts of the WSS 3.0 Tools: Visual Studio 2008 Extensions that will be worth looking at later.

Step 3: Starting to build the the definition

Now that’s the software is installed we can get on with the definition.

The joy with the Solution Generator is that you work in a nice friendly environment that you will probably already know – SharePoint!  What the the planning stage has given us is a list of content holders and columns that are eventually going to be in our New Site Definition which can be plugged into SharePoint.  The first stage will create a new site in SharePoint, add the additional content holders and columns highlighted in the planning and then package it up.

The first step is to figure out which out-of-the-box site definition to use.  In most cases the Team Site template can be used as this gives a lot of the functionality around what the custom solution will also need (for example, an announcements list for posting about new entries).  Of course if this is to be a totally new type of site, then the Blank Site template may also be worth a look.

I will assume that you know how to create a site, add content holders and columns.

For the purpose of this walk through I’ve created a Team Site with a new Document Library called Official Documents with an added column, an Announcements List called Document Announce and an image on the homepage and an announcement added.

Now that the site is created we can break out the tool that does all the magic.

Go to your start Menu and select the SharePoint Solution Generator 2008

This will fire up a new window with two options available to you:

Make sure that the Site Definition option is selected and press Next.

On the next screen you will need to select the radio button at the bottom and enter the web address to the SharePoint Site that you have created.  It is always worth keeping your site open in case you need to refer to is.  This will provide you with details for your site that you may need to refer to later.  After this has been entered, select the Next button.

NOTE: if you make an edit to the site whilst in the generator, it will not automatically be set up.  You will need to restart the Solution Generator.

The next screen will provide you with the lists that can be taken as part of the Definition:

The key thing to remember here is to bear in mind the base Site Template that your site has been modelled on.  For example, if a Team Site template is used you shouldn’t pick the lists that appear as part of this site by default.  When you come to deploy the solution you will find it will generate errors.

In this case only the two custom lists (the Document Announce and Official Documents lists) are selected.  Once this is done, press Next.

On the final screen you will need to provide the name for the solution.  Enter this and then press Next.

The final screen will provide a Summary of the solution.  Check these and then press Finish.  The Solution will then be generated and a link provided to view the files, and these look like this:

So there you have it!  Your generated solution that is now ready to be deployed.

SharePoint dev is a pretty new thing for me and feels pretty much like jumping into the ocean and being told to pull an ocean liner to New York (including all the pitfalls that may be encountered, like Icebergs!)

One thing I've had to do recently is to create a Site Definition for provisioning sites as part of a custom solution. A Site Definition is defined as:

“A Site Definition is a group of files that reside on the Web server and that define a unique type of SharePoint site.”

Office Web site

What this means is that if you have a custom solution that needs a list or library defined across a number of sites then a site definition is for you! The Site Definition can contain a lot of configuration to make a site very specific – for example, site columns, an announcement, and content types.

There can be a number of files that make up a site definition, but there are two key ones.  They are:

• feature.xml - defines a Feature and specifies the location of assemblies, files, dependencies, or properties that support the Feature.
• onet.xml - contain a reference to a Feature instance and default property values (i.e. all the lists that will make up the site).

For someone new to this can be quite daunting, especially, when you see the number of files, but also what is in the those files. There are methods to manually create these and update them and this is where the SharePoint Solution Generator steps in.  Some might call it cheating, but it certainly helps quickly generate Site Definitions.  Needless to say the first time I tried this tool, it still went horribly wrong!

Thanks to a colleague (Thanks Martin!) and a quick 101 I on the Solutions Generator, I got on track. 

So, before you dive into the heady world of Site Def’s, you will need a few tools.  They are:

• A SharePoint environment (preferably a test environment! Your SharePoint Administrator may have something to say is you mess up their live environment…)
• Visual Studio 2008 (or 2005 if you haven’t upgraded yet)
• SharePoint Solution Generator 2008 (or 2005 if you are using the 2005 version of Visual Studio)

Step 1: Planning

As with all dev work there needs to be some level of planning before getting going.  Thankfully if you do the planning in the correct way then it means that you can do an awful lot of the work up front.

Firstly you need to decide what lists, columns and metadata you will need for your solution.  So if you were doing a forms solution you will need a Forms Library.  If you need a document library with some additional columns then you create a Doc Lib and add add some additional columns in.  It’s worth documenting this for further reference – especially if you are working as part of a team.  A table below can be quite handy template for this:

* one important area with naming is that SharePoint names can be defined for the display name as well as an actual name.  It is important that the actual name format is constant with all areas of SharePoint.  So if there is a naming format standard that is no spaces, and no capitals then this must be followed.  The first time that an item is created within SharePoint the actual name is set.  Once this is in SharePoint it cannot be changed.  The display name can be though… for example:

You can see that the Display Name is “Test Name” but in the Web Address the name of the list is testname.  If these were the same, the the Web Address would be Test%20Name.  This is the case for Content Holders as well as Columns.

This is important especially when dealing with custom development.  If a workflow needs to be posting data to a field called testname but is reference as Test%20Name, then it will not work (GUID’s are a good way of managing these). So when creating these, it is also worth putting in the actual name first and then re-editing the name to be the display name(in C# code these are defined as DisplayName and Name).

Next Post will start the building process.

There’s a few gotchas that are worth bearing in mind when using tasks lists.  Now this is a pretty specific scenario but worth bearing in mind if you are using task lists.

Now task lists are like any other lists or library in SharePoint, i.e. you can version items as well as attaching items to a list.

There is some funny behaviour though if both are combined. 

1. Firstly if you create a new item in a list and then edit it, this will create a new version.
2. Now if you attach a file the following happens - a new version is created (as you have edited it), and an attachment then appears only for that version – as you would expect.
3. Say you want to change the attachment (edit it).  You would go through the following steps – you edit the item (new version created), remove the attachment and attach a new file, all versions that already had an attachment then have the same attachment – i.e. the previous versions of the item that do have an attachment are all updated – if the item is opened in edit mode then a new version of the item will be generated.
4. So what if you have an attachment that you want to edit?  Will this generate a new version?  No it doesn’t.  It will only update the attachment across all versions.
5. Final thing that you may have to do is remove an attachment.  You will open the item for editing (new version created) and select the Delete option. This will generate a new version of the item but will then update all versions of the item by removing the attachment.

So to summarise:

There’s a new version of Microsoft’s Live Writer available.  It is currently a technical refresh so be aware that things might go wonky…

New in this version is a new set of Tabs for looking at various views (Edit, Preview and Source), improved imaging tools, and lightbox is now supported.  If we could get multiple category selections then I would be a happy bunny.

Pickup, install and enjoy at: Live Writer Tech Prev