Cross posted on Andrew Connell.

We (Spencer Harbar & Andrew Connell) would like to announce three new CodePlex projects created to enable the community to share examples of useful Publishing site elements built using the Web Content Management features of Office SharePoint Server 2007. Initially these projects contain a number of commonly used MCMS 2002 Placeholder controls converted for use within MOSS Publishing sites which have been graciously donated by Microsoft. Over time these samples will be augmented and enhanced. Future plans include the consolidation and alignment of deployment mechanisms of all code samples in all projects.

All the CodePlex projects listed below are released under the most permissive Microsoft license (Ms-PL) which means that you can do virtually anything you want with these code samples.

Many of the code samples include a MS Word document explaining the process of developing the code sample as well as deployment instructions.

The projects (and the included code samples) are broken down as follows:

 

SharePoint 2007 WCM Field Controls
A collection of sample Field Controls for use within Publishing Sites built using Office SharePoint Server 2007's Web Content Management features.

• MultimediaFieldControl: Custom field type and control allowing content authors to specify a URL, width and height of a media file (SWF, PDF, WMV, MPEG, AVI, MPG, MOV) and renders the display of the control with the appropriate ActiveX control markup.

SharePoint 2007 WCM Web Parts
A collection of sample Web Parts for use within Publishing Sites built using Office SharePoint Server 2007's Web Content Management features.

• FAQWebPart: Web Part that allows business users to contribute to a frequently asked questions list which is rendered with DHTML allowing users to expand/collapse each FAQ item.
• RandomFlashMovieWebPart: Web Part that allows a content author to select one or more Flash movies from a SharePoint library. The Web Part will then display one of the Flash movies, at random, in display mode.
• ThumbnailWebPart: Content authors can specify a SharePoint library containing images that the Web Part will generate thumbnails for. It allows content authors to specify the size, sort order and the number of thumbnails to be displayed in one row.

SharePoint 2007 WCM Utilities
A collection of useful utilities for Publishing Sites built using Office SharePoint Server 2007's Web Content Management features.

• METATagsGenerator: This ASP.NET 2.0 server control renders HTML tags for each field in the current page’s content type.
• PropertyBagFeature: Allows content authors to modify values within the property bag of pages?similar to the custom properties provided in MCMS 2002.
• SharePointSSLHttpModule: Makes it easy for developers to SSL enable certain parts of a MOSS 2007 WCM Publishing site.

Please use the CodePlex Discussions capability to provide any comments and feedback.

Again?we plan to update these code samples to make the deployment story more consistent in the future as well as add additional samples to each of these projects. Got a cool sample to share?let us know!

Get this essential fix for the Cross Site Scripting Vulnerability reported by Netcraft's Martyn Tovey.

Microsoft Content Management Server 2001 Service Pack 1 ?Download the update (KB924430)

Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 Service Pack 2 ?Download the update (KB924429)

Bizarrely enough, this patch resulted in MCMS being mentioned for the first time on the BBC's news site!

 

Link to Microsoft Security Bulletin MS07-018: Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Content Management Server Could Allow Remote Code Execution (925939)

Mahdi Abdulhamid, from Interactive Saudi Arabia Ltd dropped me a line regarding some recently launched MCMS sites, check them out:

• http://www.sfda.gov.sa   (Saudi Food and Drug Authority)
• http://www.mawhiba.org.sa  (King Abdulaziz and His Companions Foundation for the Gifted)
• http://stcex.gotevot.edu.sa (Fourth Saudi Technical Conference & Exhibition)
• http://www.elm.com.sa (AL-ELM Information Security Co.)

Hear from Jeff Teper, Corporate Vice President of the Office Servers Group, about why the Content Management Server product has been incorporated the new Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Ben Robb from cScape is over on the ECM Team Blog, talking about the development of the HedKandi for Ministry of Sound using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

TechEd in Boston earlier this year featured some great content on Office SharePoint Server, and it's WCM features. To build great web content solutions with MOSS it is paramount to understand the broad spectrum of services offered. The following sessions are of particular interest to Content Management Server developers interested in what the near future holds.

TechEd US 2006

OFC202 - Windows SharePoint Services (version 3): Overview and What's New
This session covers technical fundamentals of the next generation of Microsoft's Web workspace technology - what's new, what's changed, how it works, and why you should deploy it and develop on it. This session is a prerequisite for "Office SharePoint Server 2007: Overview and What's New".

OFC207 - Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007: Overview and What's New
Office SharePoint Server 2007 is much more than an upgrade to SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Content Management Server 2002. This session covers technical fundamentals, feature overviews, new sets of server functionality, and implications for developers and IT professionals alike. NOTE: Since Office SharePoint Server 2007 is built on Windows SharePoint Service 3.0, this session requires that you attend "Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 - Overview and What's New" first.

OFC210 - Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007: Create and Customize SharePoint Web Sites and Build Workflow-Enabled Applications
Come and learn about Office SharePoint Designer 2007. This is the powerful and easy-to-use tool for information workers to automate business processes and build efficient applications on top of the SharePoint platform, and tailor their SharePoint site to their needs in an IT-managed environment.

OFC216 - Using the Web Content Management Features of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to Build Great Looking Sites
This action-packed session covers a technical drilldown of the new Web content management features in Office SharePoint Server 2007. Learn how to build a rich publishing site with a consistent, customized look and feel. Understand how authors can create Web pages in-context and using applications such as Microsoft Office Word that stay in synch with your Web site's look and feel. See how site managers can control what content gets published using features like workflow and scheduling. Finally, hear a discussion on how the authoring interface and experience can be customized.

OFC323 - Dot-Com Meets SharePoint: Building an Internet-Facing Web Site Using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
This session discusses how to build, deploy and manage Internet-facing Web sites using Office SharePoint Server 2007. Learn how to enable caching and anonymous access to make your site support millions of users, setup content deployment to copy content to your production environment across a firewall, and use the variations feature to provide Web pages in multiple languages or for multiple devices.

OFC329 - Migrating Your Content Management Server 2002 Web Sites to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
This session discusses how to migrate your Content Management Server (CMS) 2002 sites to Office SharePoint Server 2007. Learn how to assess your CMS 2002 application, the different migration scenarios possible and how to plan for migration. It includes a discussion on the out-of-the-box data migration tool and best practices for preparing your application for migration.

On a computer that is running Microsoft Content Management Server (MCMS) 2002 Service Pack 2 (SP2), you try to use the source control feature in Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server to check in files. However, you receive the following error message:

[Microsoft Visual Studio]Unable to cast object of type 'Microsoft.ContentManagement.DeveloperTools.VisualStudio.Documents.TemplateExplorerDocument' to type 'Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Interop.IVsHierarchy'.

This problem also occurs if the following conditions are true:
•An MCMS 2002 project is opened in Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.
•You perform a unit test in Visual Studio 2005.

Packt have put up a sample chapter of our new MCMS and ASP.NET 2.0 book!

You cannot access Content Management Server 2002 when you use a user from a universal group that belongs to a domain and the domain differs from the domain of the universal group.

Consider the following scenario. You use a user from a universal group membership that belongs to a domain, and the domain differs from the domain of the universal group. You try to access Microsoft Content Management Server (MCMS) 2002. In this scenario, you cannot access MCMS 2002.

FIX: Authors may receive authoring error messages when they perform any authoring action after an author deletes a page that stored on a large Content Management Server 2001 database

FIX: The import may fail when you try to import certain SDO package files in MCMS 2002 Service Pack 1a

FIX: Error message when you render a placeholder in edit mode and when you change the focus from an Internet Explorer browser window to any other open window in MCMS 2002: "Object Expected"

FIX: The attachment is stored as an unmanaged link when the file name contains a letter that has a grave accent in MCMS 2002 Service Pack 2 and in MCMS 2002 Service Pack 1a

FIX: You may not see parts of a Web site after you import an .sdo file that contains updates to connected postings in MCMS 2002 Service Pack 2

Chester has released a new update to his excellent MCMS Manager Utility Suite. Version 6.2 now targets the .NET Framework 2.0 and also includes the following new features from 6.1:

• Adding Resources
  
• Windows Authentication
  
• Web Service Authentication
  

http://mcmsmanager.sourceforge.net/

Lim Mei Ying, Stefan Gosser and I are putting the finishing touches to our new MCMS development book, coming soon from Packt.

The release of Microsoft Content Management Server (MCMS) Service Pack 2 opens up the world of ASP.NET 2.0 to MCMS developers. Written by the masters of MCMS, this book shows you how to use the new features of ASP.NET 2.0 that everyone is talking about in your MCMS development.

You will first learn how to install and configure MCMS SP2. There are two approaches to setting up a development environment for SP2: an upgrade from a previous SP1a installation or starting from scratch and building a fresh installation including SP2. Of course, both approaches are covered.

You will become familiar with the MCMS Service Pack 2 development environment, and create custom Visual Studio 2005 templates to overcome some of the issues which are present with the templates shipped with MCMS SP2.

After that, its time to look at some of the most exciting features of ASP.NET 2.0, and how you can make use of them in MCMS: master pages, site navigation, themes, and the membership provider model.

One of the coolest features introduced with ASP.NET 2.0 is master pages, which allow developers to enforce common layout and behaviour across pages within an application. You will learn about the benefits of using master pages and see a step-by-step guide for implementing them in your MCMS applications, where they become master templates!

ASP.NET 2.0 introduces a whole new way of implementing site navigation, driven by site maps. By programmatically adding channels and postings to a site map you will see how to smoothly integrate these controls to any MCMS site.

To customize the look of your site, we will see how a common look and feel can be applied efficiently to a MCMS site by using ASP.NET 2.0 themes. An essential customization required for themes to work correctly in an MCMS site is a must-read feature of this chapter.

MCMS has its own role based authorization and user management system which cannot be extended. However, the new ASP.NET 2.0 Membership Provider Model and the shipped controls can be used within MCMS applications to improve the implementation of Forms Authentication and provide a more elegant solution for authenticating against an external store.

A collection of tips and tricks round off the book, including using the Provider Model design pattern to ease migration to Office SharePoint Portal Server

I am at Tech Ed Boston this week. If you want to catch up and talk about Web Content Management in Office SharePoint Server 2007, or indeed MCMS(!) then get in touch. spence@harbar.net

The WCM in Office SharePoint Server 2007 area is now available. Watch out for more updates and orginal content soon.

Stefan has a nice entry on using Web Parts with MCMS templates.

Business Web have released AFLite 2.1. Get some.

Stefan provides a nice solution for the new "behaviour" of ActiveX controls - of which the HtmlPlaceholder is one.

Solution also up on GotDotNet.

MCMS 2002 and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 are truly integrated into a common architecture in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. In SharePoint Server 2007, many tasks such as navigation, summary links, and scheduled deployment that an MCMS 2002 developer would perform can now be performed by users or IT professionals.SharePoint Server 2007 is built upon Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services (version 3), which includes many features previously provided by MCMS 2002, such as workflow and authentication. In addition, because SharePoint Server 2007 is based upon Windows SharePoint Services V3, which is based upon Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0, you can use functionality such as master pages, authentication providers, and navigation providers in SharePoint Server 2007.

Assess and analyze your Microsoft?Content Management Server (MCMS) 2002 site to determine the level of work needed to migrate it to Microsoft?Office SharePoint?Server 2007.

The migration center includes the following information for MCMS developers:

Mapping MCMS 2002 APIs to SharePoint Server 2007: Understand the changes, differences, and benefits of the MCMS APIs as implemented in SharePoint Server.
Planning MCMS 2002 Application Migration to SharePoint Server 2007: Use this guide in planning your migration to SharePoint 2007.
SharePoint Server 2007 for MCMS 2002 Developers: See how SharePoint Server 2007 merges the functionality of MCMS 2002 and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 with new functionality to create one integrated set of technologies built on Windows SharePoint Services.

Steve Walker has posted some MCMS utilities up on a GDN Workspace. Included is the excellent standalone Template Manager, along with a Postings Author and Batch Author.

I'm in Bellevue this week attending the SharePoint Conference.

If you'd like to catch up and talk about ECM in Office SharePoint Server 2007, or SharePoint in general, drop me an email.

Launched today - the ECM team blog. Check it out!

This hotfix package fixes the following issue that was not previously documented in a Microsoft Knowledge Base article:The German and French versions of Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 Service Pack 2 (SP2) include the incorrect Nrdhtml.cab file. The Nrdhtml.cab file that is included is the English version of the file

Tyler, a PM on the WCM team talks about the Content Deployment features in Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Finally, the Security Guide has been published!

This download consists of a security white paper and the 'Minimum permissions' batch script. The white paper explains how IT administrators can apply security best practices to Microsoft Content Management Server (MCMS) 2002 Service Pack 1a (SP1a) environments. It includes sections on MCMS security fundamentals; securing MCMS 2002 environments; advanced security information such as port numbers, minimum NTFS, and registry permissions; script samples; and links to additional information. This advanced level paper assumes readers are familiar with the fundamentals of MCMS, Active Directory, and Microsoft Windows Server 2003. The batch script sets NTFS and registry permissions on MCMS 2002 SP1a servers to the recommended minimum privileges.

FIX: The Web server may stop responding when you try to generate a channel path by using the MCMS API in Content Management Server 2002.

FIX: You receive an error message when you try to use SQL authentication mode in the Database Configuration Application (DCA) after you install Content Management Server 2002 SP2
An export operation fails when you try to perform a site deployment export operation to SQL Server 2005 in Content Management Server 2002 SP1a

Via Stefan.

Requested since MCMS 2002 SP2 has been released was a possiblity to install MCMS 2002 with VS.NET 2005 without a need to install VS.NET 2003 first.

As SP2 is a service pack that only updates installed components it was necessary to install VS.NET 2003 first to ensure that the MCMS development tools could be installed with MCMS. Only this allowed the Service Pack to upgrade the developer tools to support VS.NET 2005.
For customers who did not want to do any VS.NET 2003 development or even did not have a copy of VS.NET 2003 this caused problems.

Microsoft has now released a hotfix (actually it is just a vbs script) that modifies the system in a way that allows the SP2 installer to install the developer tools for VS.NET 2005 without having VS.NET 2003 installed before.

The fix has been released as KB 915190.

Mannish and Arpan's Web Cast now available for on-demand viewing and download.

HttpModule to allow usage of PostBackUrl property with MCMS and ASP.NET 2.0

Generate google sitemap for MCMS site

MCMS Random Flash Movie Placeholder Control

Arpan has also posted his IT Forum slides, which I posted in November.

Jeff details the integrated page framework in Office SharePoint Server 2007 - a must read for MCMS developers interested in "vNext".

Manish Sharma, Senior Product Manager will present details of preperation for vNext.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006 11:30 AM (GMT-08:00)

dns, one of my former employers, have launched their new Web site which is built using MCMS 2002. Isn't it nice? Not so sure about the Flash bit thou! :)

It's worth mentioning that if you are using MCMS for an Internet presence you really should engage a company such as dns to perform a Web Application Security Test, especially if the site has been developed by a third party.

packaging and pricing announced today.

Stefan provides coverage of a Httphandler to enable the use of ASP.NET 2.0 CrossPostbacks in MCMS 2002 SP2 Applications. Nice!

Stefan details a much simpler and easier workaround for the issues caused by the 'cms' vdir in Visual Studio 2005 MCMS applications - just make that sucka hidden and you're good to go.

I was waiting on another new MCMS "launch" before posting this, but unfortunately it hasn't happened yet.

Gabe Wishnie, of IISAdmin.NET fame and a developer at VML (well known creative/dev shop, not the dodgy markup language no one ever used) let me know of the recent lauch of a new www.bluetooth.com site built using MCMS.

Some very cool stuff including multilingual support & custom translation workflow and a improved content contibution experience are part of this application. But more importantly, for an ex-single pixel pusher such as myself, is it looks pretty cool - something lots of naysayers think can't be done with MCMS.

Via Stefan, two more post SP2 hotfixes are available:

KB 913554: Clearing Hyperlinks does not work after installing SP2
KB 913401: Site Deployment export does not work on databases created before SP2 and moved to SQL Server 2005

A number of people have requested information regarding upgrading the WoodgroveNet Sample Site to an MCMS SP2 application which uses ASP.NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005. Whilst the WoodgroveNet sample is not considered best practice in many areas and certainly does not demonstrate any SP2 concepts, it can be useful in assessing the impact of upgrading your MCMS applications.

This article provides a walkthrough of upgrading the WoodgroveNet Sample to run on ASP.NET 2.0 and be developed using Viusal Studio 2005.

Gerhard Schobbe details the rationale behind the decision to build MCMS "vNext" on top of the WSS architecture (well those points that the team are willing to talk about publically at least:)) over on the WCM blog. (This was originally posted on the SharePoint Team blog.)

Via Stefan...

"DCA complains about missing priviledges when selecting a database when SQL authentication is being used.
Our current findings show that this issue is caused by the fact that the DCA now always verifies if the MCMS system account has db_datareader, db_datawriter and db_ddladmin priviledges on the SQL server - even if SQL authentication is used.

The hotfix for this problem has been released and can be requested from Microsoft Support as KB 913400" (not yet published on support.microsoft.com)

The install instructions are a little confusing regarding the required config for the SP2 developer tools. A easy way to do this is to run the following commands from a VS 2005 command prompt:

(note you may need to replace the paths so they match your installaion)


xcopy "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Content Management Server\DevTools\NewProjectWizards80\Visual Web Developer" "PATH_TO_MY_DOCUMENTS\Visual Studio 2005\Templates\ProjectTemplates\Visual Web Developer" /E

xcopy "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Content Management Server\DevTools\NewItemWizards80\Visual Web Developer" "PATH_TO_MY_DOCUMENTS\Visual Studio 2005\Templates\ItemTemplates\Visual Web Developer" /E

devenv /setup


Often for MCMS applications, some element of URL re-writing is required.
IIS Mods have a free (but still decent) filter available here which uses regexs and provides an alternative to commercial options.

Sign Up for Office "12" Beta 2 here.

For those of you developing MCMS SP2 applications with Visual Studio 2005 you will have notices a number of quirks (that's putting it politely!) with the MCMS Web Application Web Site Project Template and Template File Item Template.

I've put together a corrected Project Template, which you can donwload here.

To install, exit Visual Studio and copy the zip file to the My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Templates\ProjectTemplates folder. Then fire up a Visual Studio command prompt and execute devenv /setup.

Enjoy!

With the recent release of Service Pack 2 for MCMS, it is now possible to develop MCMS applications using Visual Studio 2005. Visual Studio 2005 offers a vastly enhanced design time experience and significantly reduces the time to develop solutions. One of the most useful aspects of Visual Studio 2005 for MCMS developers is the improved design time Web designer, which amongst a myriad of new features includes superb support for HTML validation. However with Service Pack 2 MCMS Applications are developed using the new 'Web Site' Visual Studio project type, which has a number of MCMS integration issues and causes an undesirable design time experience for developers.

This article details an approach to using the Visual Studio 2005 Web Application Project to avoid problems associated with the 'CMS' Virtual Directory and the default Item Templates.

Arpan talks briefly about MCMS "vNext".

Via Angus, the guys at Telerik are now blogging!

With the recent release of Service Pack 2 for MCMS, it is now possible to take advantage of many ASP.NET 2.0 features within your MCMS applications. The ASP.NET 2.0 AdRotator control has been enhanced to allow for programatic population, which makes it much easier to produce a AdRotator using MCMS Resource Gallery Items.

This article provides a sample MCMS ASP.NET 2.0 AdRotator, which uses the Resource Item's Display Name for the Ad Alt text, and it's Description for the Navigation URL.