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.
Related
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 :)
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.
From my experience, this is adding minor features at increased implementation and maintenance cost in comparison with using just "pure" Microsoft.Net, ASP.NET and IIS application.
Sharepoint 2007 = ( no concept of deployment version control etc, narly css/skinning, weird cms features, sp webparts not recommended, very limited worfklow features)
Sharepoint 2010 = ( is everything fixed? )
The generic feeling I have is to stay away from Sharepoint, implement in pure asp.net using proven patterns and practices, architecture etc. And just consume Sharepoint services when suitable.
Is Sharepoint 2007 or 2010 ready for real line of business applications running extranet with thousands of users, or should we just go for asp.net?
Unfortunately there is no clear cut answer to your question, I guess the proverbial "It Depends" is the best answer.
SharePoint 2010 is a big improvement over SharePoint 2007. But, most of these improvements are in the plumbing for Shared Services. So the functionality that is provided with typical collaboration sites is more or less the same.
Not to say that MS did not make major investments in everyone of your concern areas (deployment versioning, skinning, content management, etc).
My guess is if you were not happy with SharePoint 2007, you will probably still be unhappy with SharePoint 2010.
Considering that I've built several externally-facing Internet applications on SharePoint 2007 with thousands of users, yes, I'd say that 2010 is ready.
In addition to what the guys have already said:
Just like anything, you get what you pay for. Unfortunately there are a lot of cowboy SharePoint developers out there who keep repeating their wrong approach which causes problems in the long term. This then forms a bad vibe about the the product.
I've been working with SharePoint 2007 since its betas. I did lots of cowboy development myself (not that I realised at the time). I had the same opinion you did at the start but now that I know what I know, I've changed my mind about it. SharePoint 2007 is an absolute monster. Once you understand what it does well and what it doesn't do well, you'll realise that is a great product. Its only let down by a documentation and understanding. My team and I have managed to roll out many SharePoint sites and the clients are very happy with them.
The question is, is SharePoint 2010 going to be well documented?!
The other major question for me is, will it have better Error reporting (some meaningful errors instead of the non-sense it currently displays)
I have a few colleagues looking into 2010 right now as well as some MVP's I've previously worked with, they're reporting 2010 is great. There are some tricky bits to it e.g. the Ribbon but nothing that a good developer won't overcome.
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.