Mart Muller's Weblog

Microsoft’s KB contains an article now that describes how to move a WSS site from one to another server using FrontPage 2003. The basic idea is that a package is created which is deployed on another server.

For empty sites this is a great and easy solution. Content as in listitems are not moved this way, but documents are.

“Use the Packages feature to export and to import a Windows SharePoint Services Web site
You can use the Packages feature to move a Web site as empty content. When a Web site is moved as empty content, list data that is part of the original Web site does not move with the Web pages in the package. However, documents in a document library are packaged and will be moved with the Web pages in the package.

To use the Packages feature to move a Windows SharePoint Services Web site from one server to another, follow these steps: 1. Start FrontPage 2003, click File, and then click Open site.
2. In the "Look In" list, locate your source Web site, and then click Open.
3. Click Tools, click Packages, and then click Export.
4. In the "Files in Web site" list, click the Web site folder, and then click Add.
5. Click OK.
6. In the Save in box, click the folder where you want to save your Web package, click Open, and then click Save.
7. When you receive the message that states that the Web package has been saved, click OK.
8. Click Tools, point to Packages, and then click Import.
9. In the "Look In" list, open the folder where you saved your Web package, click the Web package file, and then click Open.
10. In the Destination box, type the URL of the Web server where you want to import the Web site package.

Alternatively, you can click Browse to locate the Web server where you want to import the Web site package.
11. Click Import.
12. In the Security Warning dialog box, click Yes.
13. In the Web Package Your_Package_Name deployment complete dialog box, click OK.

Back up your Windows SharePoint Services Web site
Use the Backup and Restore feature to back up the Windows SharePoint Services Web site from one server and then restore the Web site to another server. To back up your Windows SharePoint Services Web site, follow these steps: 1. Start FrontPage 2003, click File, and then click Open site.
2. In the "Look In" list, locate your source Web site, and then click Open.
3. Click Tools, point to Server, and then click Backup Web Site.
4. In the Backup Web Site dialog box, click to select the Include subsites in archive check box, and then click OK.
5. In the File Save dialog box, click the folder where you want to save the Web site backup, and then click Open.
6. In the File Name box, type a name for the backup file, and then click Save.
7. In the Web site backup completed successfully dialog box, click OK.
8. Click File, and then click Close Site.

Restore your Windows SharePoint Services Web site
Restore your Windows SharePoint Services Web site to a new Web site that does not have a template applied. To restore your Windows SharePoint Services Web site, create a new Web site at the root of the virtual server or to a subsite of your virtual server. You can then use Restore Web Site to move your Windows SharePoint Services Web site to the new Web site.

Note Permissions will not migrate with the Web site when it is restored from backup.

To restore your Windows SharePoint Services Web site, follow these steps: 1. Start Microsoft Internet Explorer, and then locate your Team Web Site Home page on your Windows SharePoint Services Web site.
2. At the top of the Home page, click Site Settings.
3. On the Site Settings page, click Manage Sites and Workspaces.
4. On the Sites and Workspaces page, click Create.
5. On the New SharePoint Site page, in the Title box, type the title that you want to give the Web page.
6. In the URL name box, type the name that you want to use for the URL of the Web page.
7. Click Create.
8. When the Template Selector page opens, quit Internet Explorer. Do not select a template.
9. Start FrontPage 2003.
10. On the File menu, click Open Site.
11. In the Site name box, type the URL of the site that you created in steps 1 through 9, and then click Open.
12. Click Tools, point to Server, and then click Restore Web Site.
13. In the File Open dialog box, open the folder where you saved the Web site backup file.
14. Click your Web site backup file, and then click Open.
15. In the Restore Web Site dialog box, click OK.
16. In the Web site restore completed successfully dialog box, click OK. “

Ofcourse when you want to move WSS sites including all content, you can use the SMIGRATE tool that is located in in the bin directory of your SharePoint installation on the SharePoint server (\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\bin\). You must have access to the server to use this tool.

read the complete article

Other related articles:

• SharePoint Document Level RestoreLevel Restore
• SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Sample: Back Up and Restore
• SMove for SharePoint
• About SharePoint and convincing system administrators
• SharePoint Backup & Recovery Test Plan

Long time ago I mentioned the weblog package in FrontPage 2003 for creating weblogs in WSS environments (such as MySite). This package has to be deployed with FrontPage. One of our customers wanted to have this blog functionality in their portal for internal blogging, so there had to be a way to safe this site as template and add it to the Site Template gallery.

The standard blog option in FrontPage

Not that hard, but somehow this package cannot be deployed as Site Template; internal references are not set properly and the template just breaks… Also becasue it didn’t contain all desired features, I had to do it the custom way!

It was not that hard, all data that is stored in a blog can be stored in lists, and views and rights can be set quite easily. For some functions however, I created custom webparts to give the blog some more power. This is the result:

Current features:

• Add/Edit/Delete postings options (depending on user rights)
• Monthly archive
• Comments (enable/disable option)
• Author Info (no. of postings/comments/first post/picture)
• Admin webpart for admin functions

More features (catagories, rss, atom) will be added soon.

Paul Schaeflein wrote an article on intranetjournal.com where he explained how to build a searchable phone directory in WSS using webpart pages, Frontpage and webpart connections. Nice article which shows how simple it is to build usefull applications for Sharepoint with external datasources.

Read the full article

Lately, we can read some information about the next version of Sharepoint. Especially Mike Fitzmaurice talks about it now and then. He points at some technical detailes like CAML, Frontpage RPC and the Sharepoint 2003 webpart compatibility. Great new of course, but I haven't heard anything yet from changes to the Sharepoint design and HTML. On this area there is a lot to achieve:

• CSS - a proper and consistent use of CSS classes. Right now, classes are missing, used twice on different UI elements or the same UI element have different classes! It's a real mess!
• HTML - The HTML on Sharepoint sites is nasty as well. Inconsistent use of quotes, invalid HTML and wierd constuctions. (lots of examples)
• Design options - Right now, there are several CSS classes. Sharepoint Portal is quite easy to customize, with pointing to a custom CSS in the general property page. However, WSS sites is a totally different story. When changing the OWS.CSS, the portal inherits these changes. Themes are an option ofcourse on this one, but even then, styles are very hard to implement. Frontpage isn't an option, because it only edits one page a time, there are hunderds of underlying pages as well to edit. These pages are mostly messed up when changing the CSS files.

Of course, we've done lots of customizations, but even after all these projects styles are still an issue. So, please, make it better in v3! :) Does anyone have some info on this?

There have been some questions lately about document level restore from Sharepoint databases. There are some options doing that with different approaches. Mike Walsh discusses some of them in his WSS FAQ.