MOSS Minimal Publishing Site Definition

Question

I'm using the MOSS Minimal Publishing Site Definition from codeplex.

I want to change the default.aspx page to be a publishing page by default, rather than a WSS page as it is currently in this site definition.

Is that possible?

Answer 1

To implement this in the web UI: You need to create a new page within your publishing site, and then set that page as the 'Welcome' page within Site Settings.

Essentially this will overide the default.aspx and use your new publishing page as the initial opening page for your site.

To implement this for a site definintion: You need to create a feature which deploys an instance of your initial page to the pages library and then sets the welcome page using the object model (probably using a FeatureReceiver).

More info on how to do this here: http://www.devexpertise.com/2009/02/02/setting-the-welcome-page-in-wss-30/

Answer 2

You can use the following also (the example is with FeatureStapling):

<!-- Publishing feature -->
<FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation Id="22A9EF51-737B-4ff2-9346-694633FE4416" TemplateName="TEMPLATENAME#NUMBER">
  <Property Key="ChromeMasterUrl" Value="~SiteCollection/_catalogs/masterpage/YOURMASTERPAGE.master"/>
  <Property Key="WelcomePageUrl" Value="YOURDEFAULTPAGE.aspx"/>
  <Property Key="PagesListUrl" Value=""/>
  <Property Key="AvailableWebTemplates" Value="ALLOWED_TEMPLATES"/>
  <Property Key="AvailablePageLayouts" Value="PAGELAYOUTS"/>
  <Property Key="AlternateCssUrl" Value="" />
  <Property Key="SimplePublishing" Value="true" />
</FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation>