I'm new to SharePoint development and design. Someone recommended using SharePoint Designer as a quicker way to have the site have a specific look that is different from the SharePoint Look Book. We want sections of our page to have borders with rounded edges, and specific color headers. I found several contradicting articles about using SharePoint Designer. Do you recommend using it on the latest version of SharePoint online in 2022? Have you had any success, or have you encountered any issues?
I enable scripting on my site. I tried connecting SharePoint Designer 2013 to my SharePoint online site successfully, but would like to know if it's a good idea to move forward with it.
As you can read from here SP Designer is supported on the latest On-Premises version of SharePoint(2019) on the bare minimum. But as you can see it is a product that is steadily heading to it's end-of-support/deprecation lifecycle.
Also, as you can understand, since it's development was halted since the 2013 version, a lot have changed since then, and many of the new features are not even supported by SP Designer.
If your are trying to make modifications to a SharePoint Online site, I would suggest using more modern tools(PowerApps, Power Automate, Modern UI, SPFx etc) and leaving SP Designer to it's way to deprecation.
You can also, update your question in terms of what you are trying to achieve and we could propose you some ideas :)
Related
We have different business divisions and each division has its ecommerce site hosted as webpart in SharePoint 2007. We also have product/adv images/documents in SharePoint.
We want to migrate from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2013 and as per our initial research we noted that we must first migrate to SharePoint 2010 and then to SharePoint 2013
Questions :
what is the best way to migrate from sharepoint 2007 to sharepoint 2013 considering above context. please provide pointers..
or should we re-write our webpart code in mvc and get rid of SharePoint. since we have soa arch i belive it would not be big pain to do so.. just ui webparts will be replace with mvc site
which third party migration tools can be used considering their reliability and cost.
please suggest best way to go ahead.
As you mentioned, there's not direct migration path from 2007 to 2013. It's hard to give a definitive answer without knowing more about your environment, it really comes down to trying to estimate the cost and time doing a manual migration (2007-->2010-->) versus purchasing a tool.
I have one customer that used Metalogix to go from 2007 to 2013 and it was fairly successful. They had a couple of branding issues and some code that had to be re-written to use updated API's but considering the scope of the migration, it was fairly smooth.
Ditching SharePoint and re-writing everything using MVC.... Not sure about that one. Even though you have a SOA architecture in place, it doesn't mean it will replace everything that SharePoint provides. It does a lot of things; security, service app scalability, branding, ECM, BCS, search, etc.
UI issue may be faced as below
Migration HTML content (in content webpart) from ntext data type to XML data.
SharePoint adds some extra tags for xml validation and it distorts to whole UI for all the pages. Means look and feel will not be as it is after migration.
Table based old structure in menus and drop-dwon is very hard to manage. It must be in and Box model for better UI management.
I had used Metalogix in my migration projects and it worked 70% fine, however be ready for the post deployment fixes as you might have to rewrite some scripts. But overall it works fairly good. I would also suggest you to run a report before migration using SPCAF tool.
Could someone point out the differences between Sharepoint Designer and the new Design Manager within Sharepoint 2013 ? I searched on the web but haven't found a concrete answer.
Thanks !
1) SPD can still be used to edit SharePoint pages, but the visual Design view and Split view were removed so you need to do all your editing in a code view. You can also still use it for the other things you mentioned.
2) Design Manager is free and included with SharePoint Server. It only works on Publishing sites so its not included with Foundation.
3) Its part of the base installation of the product. You don't need to do anything to procure it.
4) Not really. Design manager provides functionality for Importing/Exporting HTML and CSS that can be edited in any Web Design platform. For example Dream Weaver. Since SPD no longer has a WYSIWYG editor there is not real connection between the two.
5) Most of the customization you've already done will be brought across when you do a content database upgrade. I'm sure there will be some things that need to be upgraded after you do the database attach.
I'm a developer with 5 years of MCMS development and without a single know how with SharePoint.
I want to use the CMS capabilities of Sharepoint to migrate my applications but I DONT KNOW HOW TO START!!!!!!
In my actual projects i have a Visual Studio solution with all my code, my templates and my usercontrols...
I cannot see how can i do the same thing with Sharepoint :(
I want to customise my site like i did before, i want to create pages based on templates like i did before.
Anyone knows where i can find a walkthrough that explains me that?
Thank U All.
Unfortunately I think you are going to have to learn SharePoint. Even the WCM features are a big topic, and probably the best book is Andrew Connell's "SharePoint 2007 Web Content Management Development" - I don't think a 2010 version is available yet. The good news is that I think the MCMS product had a big influence on how the SharePoint WCM features were architected, so the underlying principles will be similar.
SharePoint 2010 has a Visual Web Part that will encapsulate a user control which might make the transition easier. Also see my answer to this question about converting an ASP.NET site to SharePoint which might have some relevant information.
Most of the information about converting from MCMS to SharePoint is for the 2007 version of the product. This two-part article on MSDN seems to be the best starting point.
I cannot see how can i do the same thing with Sharepoint :( I want to customise my site like i did before, i want to create pages based on templates like i did before.
Problem is, SharePoint is not MCMS, no matter how Microsoft tries to brand it as its successor.
Creating sites in SharePoint is almost opposite of how things we were done in MCMS were you build from the ground up using ASPX templates, user controls and placeholders. In SharePoint, you'll have to strip out most of the OOB stuff you don't need. The recommended approach to custom development is through web parts, CAML, and the SharePoint APIs.
I did not use sharepoint before!!
Did you use Share-point 2010 before?, MS is saying that it can do a CMS website and without previous sharepoint version limitations, I am worry about that:-
1-
Can I create whatever I need in UI layer?
Any designer does not let me do things at the lowest level, (HTML, JQUERY, Javascript, CSS), will cause great troubles, does that apply on share-point?
2-
Is it really compatible with FF, and Chrome browsers, or I will find my self in deep troubles.
3-
Do u know anything that makes me not creating a CMS site like this http://www.editeur.org/ using sharepoint 2010 ?
Thanks
These websites use SharePoint:
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/
http://www.cadbury.co.uk/
http://www.ferrari.com/
As you can see, it is possible to create highly customized layouts. However, you need to be aware that the learning curve is steep - you have never used SharePoint before, so there's a lot of learning ahead of you.
SharePoint 2010 supports non-IE browsers better than SharePoint 2007. This article contains a detailed analysis of this problem. There seems to be no known limitations related to content management, but you'll have to test it yourself to be sure.
Basically need to use SharePoint (because we promote MS yay!) as a content management system for an internet facing site.
How do I get rid of the default SharePoint look and feel and make it look like however I want it to?
I know the process involves creating a new masterpage with SharePoint Designer. However I prefer to code webpages rather than use a visual editor. Is this possible? Do I need knowledge of .NET?
Just check out ferrari.com for a very well made redesign of a SharePoint site.
Heather Solomon's Branding SharePoint series would be a good place to start. There's a lot you can do just with CSS, JS and HTML, but the most complete solutions (like Ferrari) require some pretty extensive customization with .NET and other SharePoint development techniques (features and delegate controls, in particular).
Your branding effort will be a lot easier if you only need to heavily brand the public-facing "publishing pages", from which you can remove most of the SharePoint-specific elements that make branding difficult.
Also, SharePoint Designer has a source view if you don't like the visual editor.
Yes it is possible to make it look like however you want it to (as you've seen from the Ferrari site). However to create that sort of site takes a lot of work.
Microsoft recommend the use of SharePoint Designer for 'designing' pages and layouts. However changing their behaviour almost always needs Visual Studio and development in .NET. You can largely avoid SharePoint Designer (which may worth considering as it can be a PITA) with an open source tool such as SPVisualDev. Use this with WSPBuilder for packaging your solutions (and avoid VSeWSS where possible).
Considering it sounds like you're just getting started, be aware this is a big topic with a reasonable learning curve. Read a good book on the topic such as Professional SharePoint 2007 Web Content Management Development: Building Publishing Sites with Office SharePoint Server 2007 by Andrew Connell. It takes you through most things you will encounter from the ground up.
I'm working my way through Real World Branding by Andrew Connell at the moment. It seems like a good demonstration, with code.
Plus the Heather Solomon articles as suggested by dahlbyk are always informative.
Just changing the theme, or creating a custom theme for the site, can go a long way towards making SharePoint look a lot better. It's also a lot less intensive then changing the master pages.
How to create a theme
How to deploy a theme
Example customization you can do with just CSS
Does the EULA allow you to disguise the fact that it's MS software?
Remember, you didn't buy the software, you're just paying for the privilege of using it.