Create a List (url links) and deploy it as a feature

Question

Hi All,

I'm very new to SharePoint, so apologies if this sounds a little basic.

I want to create a List in SharePoint that is just purely URL links, but then make it available to every site collection that we will create.

Once this list is created, I need it to display in a webpart (like that standard 'links' webpart). I guess I will need to create a Feature, so that it can be activated at Site Collection level.

Any ideas how this can be achieved please?

Thank you all kindly in advance, Ash ;-)

Answer 1

Hi,

What you would need is a view on your list of links (that view will display the content of your list). Have a look here for more details on List View Web Parts. Once you figure out how to create it and what you want in your view, coding it shouldn't be too hard (You can either use SharePoint Designer on your site to create the view you want and then reverse engineer it into code using SPSource or you can create it from the schema.xml of you list).

You should note however, that with WSS you will not be able to view the content of a list on another site collection (i.e. you can only views of your list on the site collection where the list was created). Cross-site list views are a lot more complex to implement (you can buy components that do it though). I'm not sure how MOSS deals with cross-site list views but if you use MOSS, you should make sure that you can do it before you start developing your view.

EDIT : I would definitely go with what IrishChieftain suggested if your list isn't too complicated and has a structure that won't change much. Dealing with cross-site list views is a pain.

Answer 2

I did something similar - but I created it as a Web Part with it's own security trimming. I covered some of the basics here:

http://www.codersbarn.com/?tag=/webpart