SharePoint 2007 – How to Embed Video Content

I am frequently asked about the rich content that appears in the SharePoint sites I have developed.  Specifically the video, Silverlight and Flash content.  The most common question is “how do you create a SharePoint site that doesn’t look like SharePoint?”  While the technical answer to that question is a little complex, the simple answer (that provides the ability to provide video content) is actually pretty simple.

Although some of the following pre-requisites may already be in place, you will need a document library and a web part page.

	Create a Document Library to contain the Web Part Pages (aspx).  These files must have a home, but you can use an existing library if a suitable one exists.  The name of the library is somewhat arbitrary, but should be as consise as possible.  It is also a good idea to provide an accurate description of the library.
	Create the Web Part Page or modify an existing page that will contain the video content.
	Edit the newly created Web Part Page and add a ‘Content Editor Web Part’.
	Enter the Embed code (either manually or by cut-and-pasting from YouTube, etc) into the source editor of the CEWP.
	Exit from editing mode of the Web Part Page and you should now see a video player with your video.

	If you are using a publishing site, with corresponding web content management enabled, the steps are slightly different, just add the CEWP and Embed code.  Don’t forget to check-in and publish your changes.

SharePoint 2007 – How to Enable Publishing Feature

SharePoint 2007 includes the ability to host and manage content-oriented Publishing sites. For additional information on the publishing capabilities of SharePoint 2007, please see this Microsoft article.

If you receiving an “Access denied” error attempting to activate the feature, please review this article.

SharePoint 2007 – How to Fix ‘Access Denied’ Activating Publishing Feature

This is a quick fix for “Access denied” errors received while attempting to activate the Publishing Infrastructure feature for a SharePoint 2007 site collection. After the feature is enabled, make sure you remember to switch the App Pool back!

	Right click on ‘My Computer’ and select ‘Manage’.
	Expand ‘Sevices and Applications’, then ‘IIS Manager’.
	Expand ‘Web Sites’, then right click on your MOSS web site.
	Select ‘Properties’, then the ‘Home Directory’ tab.
	Change the ‘Application Pool’ to your ‘SharePoint Central Administration’ application pool and select ‘OK’.
	From the command-line, execute ‘IISRESET’.

Enable the ‘Publishing Infrastructure’ feature within ‘Site collection features’. For detailed instructions for this step, please see this post.

SharePoint 2007 – Using Firefox and Firebug to Debug CSS

Debugging the CSS that comes with the style sheets (CSS) in SharePoint 2007 can be challeging at times.  The best tool I’ve found is a plug-in for Firefox called Firebug.  This demo shows how to use Firebug to “test out” how certain CSS changes will look and to determine which CSS file is being used – remember the ‘C’ in CSS stands for cascading.

Also, modifying the OOTB SharePoint style sheets (e.g. ‘Core.css’, etc) is NOT recommended and goes against best practices.  For more information on CSS, see this CSS Tutorial from w3schools. The best online source for information on branding SharePoint is contained in Heather Solomon’s blog.

SharePoint 2007 – How to Change a Site’s Theme

Although there is some debate and essentially 2 camps on the use of themes within SharePoint 2007, there is no question they are much easier and safer for actual end users. I use master pages when I need to change structural elements of a site and themes for the look and feel.

Even though an AJAX version with live preview would be even better, the OOTB method is easy and does provide a quick preview of each theme’s colorscheme.

SharePoint 2007 – How to Create a New Site Collection & Team Site

The following demo shows how to create a SharePoint 2007 site collection and associated team site through Central Admininistration and Site Actions.

How to add a Local Hosts Entry

Frequently during the development process you need the ability to reference an unregisted DNS name (i.e. ‘application.name.com’) prior to formal internal and/or external DNS registration or updates.  It is really pretty simple and only requires the additional of the name to IP mapping in the HOSTS file on the MOSS server(s) and each of the development machines.

The ‘hosts‘ file does not have a file extension and is typically located in ‘C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc‘ (assuming the default Windows installation location).

Step 1:  Open notepad (or your favorite text editor) either through the menu or by clicking Start-Run and typing notepad in the Run dialog.  Please note that in Windows 7, you must run notepad as an administrator in order to save the required changes.

Step 2:  Open the ‘hosts‘ file (which is typically located in ‘C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc’) and enter the IP address and the associated entry (i.e. 192.168.1.117  coolapp.mycompany.com).

Step 3:  Save the changes to the hosts file and then flush the DNS cache from the command-line using the ‘ipconfig /flushdns‘ command.

Note, in MOSS 2007, the host entry should correspond to the host header or alternate access mapping entry.

What’s on my iPhone?

Several people have asked me about the apps on my iPhone and I’ve become somewhat of a local “expert” on iPhone apps (and their deployment within a company’s enterprise), so here is what’s on my iPhone. Please note that several of these I would not recommend to CIO’s for their enterprise .

SharePoint 2010, MSS (notice the missing ‘O’)

The new version of SharePoint has been released in beta and is available to be downloaded via MSDN’s subscription service (only 64-bit version is available).

Son of SmartPart (aka SmartPart v3)

As a consultant, I have to create webparts that can be updated and maintained by the staff developers and at least in my experience, those developers have a lot of experience with custom ASP.NET Web User Control (ascx) creation and not a lot of experience with SharePoint 2007’s object model and API.  In many of these environments I have found that using SmartPart v3, from Jan Tielens is a good middle ground.

The SmartPart is a general purpose webpart that can contain any ASP.NET User Control and also provides access to the MOSS object model.  There are a variety of examples that already exist for creating User Controls, but the key here is the ability to integrate them by simply copying the files to each of the web front-ends (after the SmartPart webpart has been properly deployed, of course).