Tag: SharePoint

Community kit for Sharepoint

Thought I’d do quick posting on what I’ve found so far about install the Community Kit for Sharepoint. To get it running all you need to do is download the source and then run the batch file that is included. When you run the batch file you will be asked for your Sharepoint server and then the blog site on the Sharepoint server. Once the batch file is complete your blog site will be automatically upgraded.

What I like

– The new look and feel is great. It really make the normal Sharepoint blog site look flash. Very much like WordPress now.

– The fact that blog postings URL’s have been changed to …\blog\archive\2008\… rather than the normal Sharepoint links. even better there is translation so that anything that has already been indexed by something like Google will remain valid and accessible to visitors

– The fact that I can still get to my Sharepoint blog admin commands which remain in Sharepoint style screens.

– It didn’t break my blog. I can still post via Windows Live Writer or manually via the blog. Also, all my existing entries remained.

– The automated trackbacks and links to del.icio.us, facebook and what not. You see it everywhere and it is now nice to have in Sharepoint blogs.

What I haven’t figured out yet

– Why my postings from Windows Live Writer and manual interaction with the blog seem to remove my paragraph breaks. This make things more difficult to read. I’m sure that it is some simple HTML or CSS thing but as yet I haven’t worked out how to get my paragraph breaks back.

– How to edit the theme and perhaps ad my own graphics and text. Now, I’m sure there is a reall simply way but you need time to sit down and fiddle with all this. Was really impressed with what has been done over at http://www.wssdemo.com/blog with moving icons and what not. Somewhere, I’m sure there is way to do that but as yet I haven’t found it.

Gotcha’s

– The only one so far is the fact that with the kit installed you can’t easily roll back to the way the blog used to be just in Sharepoint. Now, I’m sure you could remove the kit files from Sharepoint and that would fix the issue but it would still be nice to be able to revert back to the original Sharepoint blog look and feel quickly.

Summary

So all in all I am pretty happy with the ease with which the kit can be installed and the “make over” it gives standard Sharepoint blogs. Sure there is still stuff I’d like to do to make the kit more personalized to my blog as well as few minor issues to resolve (which take time), but generally I think that the creators deserve a hearty pat on the back for an excellent effort and making it available for free. Well Done.

Almost famous

I’d like to thank Wayne Small who have given me a bit of plug in his blog. Appreciate that Wayne. He was mentioning how I have applied the Community Blog kit to my Sharepoint blog and how different it now looks (for the better). I am preparing a detailed post about my experiences with this update and how simple it is and some observations I have come across. I just wanted to wait a while to everything works as expected before I comment too much. However, since Wayne has now graciously given me a plug I better hurry on and do it eh?

Gear up with Sharepoint

The drum beating around Sharepoint from Microsoft seems to be increasing (yeah!). They have just produced the following Gear Up web site that contains a whole host of information about driving adoption of Sharepoint within a business. If you are keen to get Sharepoint adopted in your business take a look at the Buzzkit available on the site.

On the site you find a huge amount of resources (videos, whitepapers, links, etc) that will help you through every stage of a Sharepoint implementation.

Hopefully now businesses will begin to understand the power that Sharepoint can unleash in their business. If you don’t contact me (director@ciaops.com) and I’ll explain why.

Search Server Express 2008 is now available

Man, have I been waiting for this. Microsoft has finally released an RTM version of Windows Search Server Express 2008. Better yet they haven’t changed the price! It is still free. Yes free.

Why have I been waiting for this? Simply because, not only can I improve the searching ability of my Sharepoint sites BUT I can also now index every document in file shares on my network. How helpful is that going to be? You don’t have to make any changes to your filing system, you simply tell Search Server Express 2008 to crawl you network file shares. It will index not only the documents but also the contents of these documents (ie Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc). So now you can use the Search Server interface to search for files as well as the contents of those files. How handy is that? Now all that information won’t remained buried.

When you combine the power of Search Server 2008 and Windows Sharepoint Services you have a really powerful solution to help you find and collaborate with the information in your business. Best of all, both products are FREE to download, you can’t get better than that can you? All you need is a Windows 2003 server to run them on.

Now that Search Server Express 2008 is available I’ll be downloading and implementing it internally. I’ll post my findings here and maybe even consider doing a video. If you want to download Windows Search Server Express 2008 you can do so from :

http://www.microsoft.com/enterprisesearch/serverproducts/searchserverexpress/download.aspx

Microsoft joins the cloud

Well you know that it has been coming but Microsoft has announced that it is going to be offering hosted services. What is it going to offer? Firstly, things like Exchange, Sharepoint and Office but eventually I’m sure that you’ll find all of Microsoft’s software online.

So where does that leave distributors and resellers? As I have said for a while here, simple GONE! Microsoft writes the software, Microsoft hosts the software and eventually Microsoft collects the money directly. Sure, initially it may chose to resell through resellers but in the long run why would you bother? If they are doing everything else except send the bills doesn’t it make sense to cut out the middle person and do everything directly with the customer? Makes a hell of a lot of sense to me from a business perspective.

If you think that this ‘hosted software’ is a fad I believe you are ignorant. If you are not changing your business models and skills to cope with this changing landscape then you are naive. But hey, that your choice but to me the IT world is clearly changing and there isn’t going to much room left for the small companies that try and sell shrink wrapped computers and software to customers any more. Soon you’ll only be in business if you can add VALUE to what is available from the big boys like Google and Microsoft.

To see what Microsoft is now offering online see  http://www.microsoft.com/online/default.mspx

Advanced Sharepoint Videos and Whitepapers

Stolen from : http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2008/02/18/advanced-sharepoint-videos-and-whitepapers.aspx

 

Title

Streaming Video

White Paper

Overview: Office SharePoint Server server farm architecture

None

Download

Overview: Configuring server farms

Watch

Download

Securing server farms

Watch

Download

Configuring performance options

Watch

None

Backup, Restore, High Availability and Disaster Recovery

Watch

Download

Operations and management

Watch

Download

Capacity planning

Watch

Download

Search architecture and configuration

Watch

Download