Comments on Chris O'Brien: Deploying master pages and page layouts as a featu...

@Shereen, The typical way to do this is to use th...

2010-07-09T00:02:34.654+01:00

@Shereen,

The typical way to do this is to use the AllUsersWebPart element to provision the web parts you need when a page is created based on the layout. In general terms content either has to be part of the template (master page/page layout) or in a web part or field on the page.

Hope that helps,

Chris.

Hi Chris, Very helpful post, I've been lookin...

2010-07-03T16:53:12.059+01:00

Hi Chris,

Very helpful post, I've been looking through your xml file, but what i can't seem to understand is how you would add a document library or a links list to a page layout, so anytime a user users that page layout, those web parts appear by default? I can can add my own custom web parts fine and even the out of the box web parts like the image web part, but i'm not sure how to add any web parts from the Lists & Libraries section.

Is that why you use the content by query web part? is that the only way to add that content to a page?

Oops, thanks Dan!

2010-01-12T00:23:59.464Z

Oops, thanks Dan!

You forgot the close tag in the second "Modul...

2010-01-11T18:52:18.908Z

You forgot the close tag in the second "Module" element!

@Neamat, Glad to hear you got sorted, well done! ...

2009-07-23T22:53:38.534+01:00

@Neamat,

Glad to hear you got sorted, well done!

Chris.

This is me again.. I was able to figure out the pr...

2009-07-23T07:33:07.061+01:00

This is me again.. I was able to figure out the problem I guess :) . The problem was related to the permissions of the feature folder. I inherited the folder permissions and it worked. I hope this is not temporary work as it did before but I tried to perform an IISReset and it worked after that and cleaned my cache to be sure that it's working and it did. So if anything else happens i think i'm gonna send to you a comment :) . Thanks

Hello Chris, I hope you can help me because I'...

2009-07-22T18:05:06.411+01:00

Hello Chris,

I hope you can help me because I've been trying to provision a master page with its images and CSS styles and I've been trying for three weeks now and I still can't make it work except in a test machine. I followed your post at the end and I'm getting this error after feature activation "403 Forbidden" in the website although the activation is done successfully. When I deactivate the feature and use the files that already uploaded after the activation, everything works fine but once for any reason an IISRESET is performed, I lose all the CSS that is applied to the master page and I also lose my images!.

Please Help.. If you need more information please also let me know.

Hi Rodolfo,

The key thing is really the XML...

2009-03-03T06:05:00.000Z

Hi Rodolfo,

The key thing is really the XML shown above. What exactly are you looking for?

Thanks,

Chris.

Hi Chris

Could you upload a sample of this ...

2009-03-01T14:32:00.000Z

Hi Chris

Could you upload a sample of this piece of work for us

REgards

Rodolfo

@Mo,

Sorry, afraid I've not seen this error...

2008-05-24T10:42:00.000+01:00

@Mo,

Sorry, afraid I've not seen this error. A parameter-less constructor is required in deserialization, and I could believe this occurs in the process of adding web parts from a Feature.

But I can't think why you're seeing this with CQWP - I've certainly done it with no problems in the past. I've uploaded an Elements file which contains the settings I used so you can compare it with yours - see http://sharepointchris.googlepages.com/Module.xml.

HTH,

Chris.

Hi Chris,
Am using the AllUsersWebPart
tag ...

2008-05-22T03:04:00.000+01:00

Hi Chris,
Am using the AllUsersWebPart
tag in element manifest to add a CQWP by default and it gives the error as shown below. However if I use any other web part it works ok.

Have you encountered such error?
Would appreciate your advice.

Thanks,
Mo
------ Error message below ------

No parameterless constructor defined for this object. at System.RuntimeTypeHandle.CreateInstance(RuntimeType type, Boolean publicOnly, Boolean noCheck, Boolean& canBeCached, RuntimeMethodHandle& ctor, Boolean& bNeedSecurityCheck)
at System.RuntimeType.CreateInstanceSlow...

@slangdon21,

Yes, the Content Deployment Wi...

2008-01-20T16:57:00.000Z

@slangdon21,

Yes, the Content Deployment Wizard will take across the dependent content types for your master pages/page layouts etc.

Hope you find it useful.

Cheers,

Chris.

Thanks very much for the advice Chris. I've al...

2008-01-17T16:56:00.000Z

Thanks very much for the advice Chris. I've also stumbled across your SharePoint Content Deployment Wizard, which looks like it may do the job, as really all we're doing is exporting the contents of our masterpage gallery & it looks like this pulls through the related content types too. If I ever bump into you in a pub, I owe you a pint!

@slangdon21,

What you've just described is ...

2008-01-15T21:19:00.000Z

@slangdon21,

What you've just described is what the Solution Generator element in VSeWSS is intended to do - it's worth checking out as it may well get you well on the way, but it's not perfect.

Other than that AC has some custom STSADM commands to generate the XML from your site columns and content types so you might find these useful.

Remember also that Features aren't the only way to deploy your artifacts. Several factors could go into the decision, but see
STSADM export, Content Deployment, Content Migration API, Features/Solutions - deployment options compared for some options.

HTH,

Chris.

Any ideas if there are tools out there to automati...

2008-01-15T14:39:00.000Z

Any ideas if there are tools out there to automatically package content types, master pages & layouts in an existing Sharepoint site into a feature? I've got a site with quite a lot of items in and it seems like a pretty laborious process copying & pasting all the pages & describing everything manually in an xml file.

Thanks in advance.

Hi Vincent,

I'd need do some more testing t...

2007-11-09T18:20:00.000Z

Hi Vincent,

I'd need do some more testing to see the effects on list item values etc. However, one thing I would say now is remember that you should be safe to modify the list item itself (e.g. title etc.) through the browser - this will not cause the file to be customized (and be placed into the database), since you are not touching the file itself.

HTH,

Chris.

Hi Chris,

to follow up on Marcel and Kevan'...

2007-11-09T16:50:00.000Z

Hi Chris,

to follow up on Marcel and Kevan's issues, we have the same issue here.

If we undeploy the feature, delete the file, and we redeploy the feature, the properties such as title get updated on a file such as a master page or page layout.

Now I understand that if we try to reactivate a file that was already provisionned, the properties won't update. That is however not viable since we may have to change those properties at a later point in time and if content pages are created from those page layouts, you can't just delete them. Is this a by design feature that has no override flags to it?

This is causing us quite a bit of hassle since we can't delete those files anymore and don't want to end up with those files in the database because we have to do those changes manually.

Thanks in advance for your input!

Vincent

Hi guys,
I'm trying to find a way to pull reusa...

2007-11-06T20:52:00.000Z

Hi guys,
I'm trying to find a way to pull reusable content from one site to another. Can you help?

Thanks Vonnie

@Gouranga,

I've not seen that I'm afraid. I...

2007-11-01T22:47:00.000Z

@Gouranga,

I've not seen that I'm afraid. It sounds like something isn't quite happening right with gathering the dependencies for the site export. Is it a publishing site? Remember that publishing sites aren't really supported with site templates, so that could be the issue if so?

HTH,

Chris.

@Collin/Deelpunt/others having difficulty seeing f...

2007-11-01T22:44:00.000Z

@Collin/Deelpunt/others having difficulty seeing files get updated:

I've replied to these comments in an article at Master pages/page layouts deployed as a Feature not updating.

Cheers,

Chris.

Hi Chris,

sorry for the late reaction. Yes,...

2007-10-31T08:58:00.000Z

Hi Chris,

sorry for the late reaction. Yes, I already tried to delete the file and reactivate the feature. Due to deadlines I skipped the "providing page layouts by features". When this project is finished I hope I have some time to reinvestigate this problem. If I solve it myself you will be the first to know.

Thanks for all the effort you put in to this question.

Kind regards,
Marcel Siepel

Chris....I had a wierd scenario play out with this...

2007-10-30T15:30:00.000Z

Chris....I had a wierd scenario play out with this. I have the page layout coming out right (I think) However, i also have 3 site templates (stp) created from a set of sites on say (FarmA). In my wsp I install the content types, the page layouts and master pages then load the stp files into the _catalogs/wt folder in FarmB.In the site template (stp) there is a page (Home.aspx) that uses one of the page_layouts installed with the WSP. All installs correctly (it seems) but when I started double checking, if you attempt to open Home.aspx in Designer, it of course informs you that you canonly modify the page_layout in designer, and whenI click OK it proceed to FarmA to try to edit that page_layout.
So it seems the STP kept the hard coded full URl to the FarmA pagelayout and did not keep a relative link to it.
Any thoughts on how to get around that? If you have seen it, can reproduce?

Chris -

OK, I read the "considerations" art...

2007-10-30T15:23:00.000Z

Chris -

OK, I read the "considerations" article and it would appear that my custom files have become unghosted at some point, though they do not show as such through Designer. Is there another way to tell if the file has been unghosted, besides just not seeing the changes?

Actually, with the site I'm working with, I never get the unghosted icon; I just tested by checking out then checking in a document and nothing. Are publishing sites different in some way?

Chris -

Like many others, I'm having troubl...

2007-10-30T14:01:00.000Z

Chris -

Like many others, I'm having trouble getting the feature to upgrade successfully; basically, it refuses to update files that are being used.

Just on a whim, I decided to manually check out the documents in the gallery prior to running the feature bat file (it does the retract/delete/add/deploy routine). The files then were successfully updated, though I had to go in and manually check them back in.

Am I missing something in my solution files that would handle this? I haven't touched the site with Designer, so I don't believe it's a case of unghosted files.

Thanks!

I want to come back to the problem of Christian of...

2007-10-20T21:33:00.000+01:00

I want to come back to the problem of Christian of 12 september of the loss of web parts in Page Layouts.

We have created a Publishing portal and we have changed an existing PageLayout called WelcomeLinks.aspx so it included 2 webpart zones with standard webparts we would like to have on each default.aspx page.

When we say in the site actions menu create site, a new subsite is created. The default.aspx page is based on the WelcomeLinks.aspx Pagelayout.

So we would have expected to see the 2 webpart zones with standard webparts. But no. The webparts do not show up.

When we go the sharepoint designer and open the default.aspx file we can say detach from pageLayout and insert webpart zones with web parts and then reattach the default.aspx file to the PageLayout. We now have them.

But we want to have them right away via the PageLayout. And not via the detach trick. We have 100 subsites to go through.

Is it possible to change the PageLayout WelcomeLinks.aspx so it includes 2 webpart zones with standard webparts so each default.aspx page of our subsite had them ?.

And why do the webparts don't show up ?

Comments on Chris O'Brien: Deploying master pages and page layouts as a featu...

@Shereen, The typical way to do this is to use th...

Hi Chris, Very helpful post, I've been lookin...

Oops, thanks Dan!

You forgot the close tag in the second "Modul...

@Neamat, Glad to hear you got sorted, well done! ...

This is me again.. I was able to figure out the pr...

Hello Chris, I hope you can help me because I'...

Hi Rodolfo,The key thing is really the XML...

Hi ChrisCould you upload a sample of this ...

@Mo,Sorry, afraid I've not seen this error...

Hi Chris,Am using the AllUsersWebPart tag ...

@slangdon21,Yes, the Content Deployment Wi...

Thanks very much for the advice Chris. I've al...

@slangdon21,What you've just described is ...

Any ideas if there are tools out there to automati...

Hi Vincent,I'd need do some more testing t...

Hi Chris,to follow up on Marcel and Kevan'...

Hi guys,I'm trying to find a way to pull reusa...

@Gouranga,I've not seen that I'm afraid. I...

@Collin/Deelpunt/others having difficulty seeing f...

Hi Chris,sorry for the late reaction. Yes,...

Chris....I had a wierd scenario play out with this...

Chris -OK, I read the "considerations" art...

Chris -Like many others, I'm having troubl...

I want to come back to the problem of Christian of...

Hi Rodolfo,

The key thing is really the XML...

Hi Chris

Could you upload a sample of this ...

@Mo,

Sorry, afraid I've not seen this error...

Hi Chris,
Am using the AllUsersWebPart
tag ...

@slangdon21,

Yes, the Content Deployment Wi...

@slangdon21,

What you've just described is ...

Hi Vincent,

I'd need do some more testing t...

Hi Chris,

to follow up on Marcel and Kevan'...

Hi guys,
I'm trying to find a way to pull reusa...

@Gouranga,

I've not seen that I'm afraid. I...

Hi Chris,

sorry for the late reaction. Yes,...

Chris -

OK, I read the "considerations" art...

Chris -

Like many others, I'm having troubl...