AUSPC 2011: How we did it: NothingButSharePoint.com

P la t inum

Go ld

AUSTRALIASHAREPOINTCONFERENCEMARCH 8+9 2011

NothingButSharePoint.com: HOW WE BUILT THIS GLOBAL

COMMUNITY ON SHAREPOINT 2010

Jeremy Thake

Enterprise Architect

AGENDA

• The Beginning

• The Project

• SharePoint 2010 WCM Platform

• Extensions

• Implementation

• Summary

THE BEGINNING

WHO

EndUserSharePoint.com Mark Miller End User

SharePointJoel.com Joel Oleson IT Pro

SharePointDevWiki.com Jeremy Thake Developer

Richard Harbridge Business Analyst

WHY?

• SharePoint 2010• Wiki = poor in 2007 => Atlassian Confluence

• Blog engine => Joel on WSS 3.0, Mark on WordPress

• Publishing was v1.0 after MCMS “mash up”

• Discussion Groups poor => phpBB

• Duplicate content• “SP1 is out!”

• “SharePoint Saturday Perth is on”

• Covering out of topic stuff to try and “pull punters”• EndUserSharePoint.com covering Code ;-)

• Unify user base• “One stop shop”

THE PROJECT

INFRASTRUCTURE - FPWEB

• Production and Test Farm

• Shared SQL server with multiple instances

• SSL certs on both

• FAST!!!

• fpWeb = really helpful!

LOOK & FEEL

• Marcy Kellar• UX

• Heather Waterman & Corrie Haffly• 1 day turnaround from concept design on initial blast

• Kyle Schaeffer • Refactoring style sheets

• Final touches on CSS pixel pushing

• Browser support

MIGRATION

• Atlassian Confluence

• WordPress

• Migrated to Publishing Pages

• Comments and Metadata

• Joel’s blog• Custom .NET code to convert

LANDING PAGEDEMO

SHAREPOINT 2010 WCM PLATFORM

SITE COLLECTIONS

• One for each area and then one for root

AUTHENTICATION

• No one wants to deal with idiots who forget their password

• Claims Based Authentication• Live ID

MANAGED META DATA

• Categories in Articles, News

• Leveraged in Refiners

• Will be leveraged in Paged Content Query Web Partsfrom hard coded links in Navigation

PUBLISHING

• Multiple Content Types• Article

• News

• Podcast

• Wiki Pages

• Multiple Page Layouts• Edit metadata in Page Controls

• Content Approval

• Extended Content Query Web Part is your friend!

CREATING ARTICLEDEMO

MY SITES

• Not really designed for Internet• “Organisation”

• Leveraging Managed Metadata

• Doesn’t work for anonymous

SEARCH

• Search Refiners in use• Managed Metadata: Category

• Content Author (not modified by)

• Will leverage FAST in next release

BLOGS SITE TEMPLATE

• Rich Text Editor poor

• No video media

• Comments poor• No Anonymous, AKISMET, CAPTCHA, subscription

• RSS poor

• Master page skin won’t immediately work

• CKS:Blog Site Template

EXTENSIONS

AGGREGATION

• Cross Site Collection• All News

• All Events

• All Articles

• All Podcast

• All Wiki Pages

COMMENTS

• Anonymous comments poor

• No:• Metadata

• HTML Formatting

• Note Board relies on User Profile

• Recent Comments

• CAPTCHA

COMMUNITY EQUITY - @JTHAKE

• Service Application

• Real-time• Top Views

• Top Contributors

• Top Rated

WEB ANALYTICS

• SP2010 RTM not enough stats• Per Site Collection

• Google Analytics

MEGA DROP DOWN (MDD) - @TOMDIETZ

• Complex navigation

• Categories leveraging Search and Managed Metadata

RSS

• No way to really aggregate feeds

• No iTunes/Zune generation for podcasts

USER PROFILES

• Anonymous can’t access Service Applications

• “Workaround” with internal reflection

EDIT MY DETAILSDEMO

SOCIAL INTEGRATION

• Facebook

• Twitter

FORUMS – LIGHTNING TOOLS – SOCIALSQUARED

• Discussion boards in SharePoint limited

• SQL back end

• Features• Unread topic indication

• Topic and post moderation

• Email alerts for new topics and posts

• User post count

• Topic ratings

• User signatures

• Search

• Quote posts in your reply

• RSS support

• Full customization of look and feel

IMPLEMENTATION

BRANDING: DEVELOPERS VS DESIGNERS

• Don’t under estimate branding!

• Hard to find Designer who can build without Developer

• Doesn’t usually have Visual Studio to package

• Package better for deployment• slower for changes than SharePoint Designer 2010

BALSAMIQ

MASTER PAGES

• Starter Master Page

• Ribbon adds “challenges”

PAGE LAYOUTS

• One per Content Type for now

• Page Controls ROCK!!!

• Image Picker not so much

WEB PART RENDERING

• XSLT• Designers don’t need to touch Developers code

• = AWESOME!

PROJECT PER SITE COLLECTION

• Upgrading used

• Activate/Deactivate required

• Separation

• Some common WSP

TOOLS

• VS2010

• CKS:Dev

• SharePoint Designer 2010

• Balsamiq

• BIG BEEFY LAPTOP: 2 Quad i7, SSD + Hybrid, 16Gb RAM

SOURCE CONTROL

• BitBucket.org – Atlassian (Confluence, Jira)

• Mercurical using TortioseHg

• Free for up to 5 users, cheap for more ;-)

POWERSHELL IS YOUR FRIEND

• Automated Builds

• Creating:• Web App

• Site Collections

• Deploying WSPs

• Activating Features

• Adding Web Parts to pages

• Applying Security

• Setting Master Pages, Available Page Layouts, Content Types etc

SERVICE APPLICATIONS

• Use CKS:Dev template

• Complex

• Why?• Windows Communication Foundation

• SQL Persistance Store

• Scalable

• Cross Web Application/Farm

• Because I can!

SUMMARY

LESSONS LEARNT

• Set expectations up front

• Get the right resources

• Know the limitations of SharePoint 2010

• Set Project Plan

• Set Communication Plan

THANK YOU!

• Jeremy Thake

• Mark Miller, Natasha Felshman – Team EUSP

• Joel Oleson

• Richard Harbridge

• Geordie Henderson, Mike Dougherty, Simon Huang - MetaLogix

• Chris Schwab, Tom Brauch, Tom Lutker - fpWeb

• Marcy Kellar - UX

• Heather Waterman & Corrie Haffly, Kyle Schaeffer – “pixel pushers”

• Tom Dietz – MDD

• Nick Swan & Brett Lonsdale – Lightning Tools

• Waldek Mastykarz , David Mann, Matt Smith, Todd Bleeker, Wes Hackett, Wouter van Vogt - CKS:Dev team

• Waldek Mastykarz – All his extra bits

• Wictor Wilen, Paul Schaflein, Travis Nielsen, Spencer Harbar – Claims Based Authentication

• Sezai Komur – WCM guru

• Microsoft Product Team!

REFERENCES

• NBSP https://www.NothingButSharePoint.com/

• NBSP How we did it http://bit.ly/nbspHowWeDidIt

• CKS:Dev http://cksdev.codeplex.com/

• Randy Drisgill http://blog.drisgill.com/

• What’s Changed in Blogs in SP2010 http://bit.ly/spblogenhance

Silver Sponsors

Bronze Sponsors

Gold Sponsors